Overgaauw wine estate

Returning to visit the Cape we delight in the prospect of visiting new wine estates.  This year our first stop was Overgaauw which ticks all the boxes which matter most to us.  I love family run estates, they have a warm sense of home and history.  The current wine maker is 4th generation and a new addition to the family is the potential 5th generation to take the baton (erk that’s some pressure, hope he doesn’t choose to be a rock god).

Leigh conducted the wine tasting while sharing cheery anecdotes and information about the wines and estates.  If I were an employer I would love to have someone like her working for me, she told a tale of being so delighted to find an out of stock wine at a store that she bought a bottle for R100 more than the estate would have sold it for, now that is a rare degree of passion and staff loyalty not to mention a clear indicator of the quality of the wine.  Her enthusiasm added to the richness of the tasting.

Naturally the tasting would be found wanting if the wines themselves fell short of the mark, fortunately our family group were unanimous in our enjoyment.  My and Cliff’s favourite was the Chardonnay, a lightly wooded wine that would appeal to both people who enjoy wooded Chardonnays as well as those who prefer unwooded Chardonnays.  Jane chose the Sauvignon Blanc as her favourite and Al came home with a bottle of the 1993 Cape Vintage (we would normally know this as “port” but the Portuguese have won exclusive use of that name).  There were only 6 bottles of this vintage remaining for sale when we visited and the estate stopped producing “port” about 10 years ago so these may soon be collector’s items.  Overgaauw is well known for its Tria Corda Bordeaux blend and Touriga Nacional but unfortunately these were not available for tasting at the time of our visit as they were sold out.