De Grendel’s Unique Elim Shiraz Continues Its Winning Ways
De Grendel Elim Shiraz 2018 is a Top 12 champion in the 2020 Shiraz SA Challenge, maintaining the impressive track record of a distinctive wine that continues to attract accolades.
Producer association Shiraz South Africa announced the Top 12 winners in their annual challenge in an online event on Thursday, 30 July, with judging panel convenor Dr Andy Roediger CWM saying this year had attracted the best entries ever in eight years of the competition. TV personality Marciel Hopkins acted as MC and announced the wines that came up trumps.
This is the second time that De Grendel Elim Shiraz has made the list of the Top 12 South African shiraz’s, with the maiden 2016 vintage a winner in the 2018 Shiraz SA Challenge.
“We are delighted to be awarded Top 12 status and proud of the recognition of the quality of the 2018 De Grendel Elim Shiraz. For a wine in only its third vintage, it is performing outstandingly and, more importantly, consistently. Quality for me is not a one-time destination and this wine continues to take us on an incredible journey,” De Grendel cellar master Charles Hopkins.
The 2017 De Grendel Elim Shiraz earned a five-star rating in the 2020 Platter’s by Diners Club South African Wine Guide and top place, with a 95 point score, in the winemag.co.za 2019 Shiraz Report.
De Grendel Elim Shiraz reflects cellar master Charles Hopkins’ passion for the cultivar and especially the distinctive rotundone style produced in the cool maritime climate close to Africa’s southern tip of Cape Agulhas.
“There are few areas in South Africa that can produce the rare and sought-after rotundone style found in our Elim Shiraz – with its incredibly alluring, fragrant and intense black pepper and herbal notes – and Elim is the most consistent,” Hopkins said.
The 2018 Elim Shiraz, from a hot and dry vintage, is big in structure with a rich palate and firm tannins supported by well-integrated oak. Expressing maraschino cherry, violet and blackberry aromas, the palate is multi-layered with intense black fruit flavours – a wine for the Shiraz devotee.
The wine was partly whole-bunch fermented in stainless steel tanks to produce concentrated fruit purity and robust, structured tannins, and matured for 13 months in older French oak barrels.
Made for maturation over at least 10 years, De Grendel Elim Shiraz 2018 is bottled in magnums in limited quantities and available exclusively to De Grendel Loyalty Club members via www.degrendel.co.za or via De Grendel's Loyalty Club Coordinator, Amelia Truter, on club@degrendel.co.za.
Furthermore, De Grendel Shiraz 2016 was one of the eight runners-up in this year’s Shiraz SA Challenge.
Shiraz South Africa chair Edmund Terblanche, cellar master at La Motte, commented that: “The overall quality in the Shiraz category was extremely high and accommodated all the different styles such as pepper-dominated, fruit-driven or spicy. Here the younger vintages of 2017 to 2019 actually outclassed the much talked-about vintage of 2015.”
Along with Roediger and Terblanche, Hopkins was also a judge in this year’s Shiraz SA Challenge along with Fairview cellar master Anthony de Jager and owner/winemaker and Cape Wine Master from Eenzaamheid, Janno Briers-Louw.