Boekenhoutskloof Semillon 2022

In 1820, Semillon accounted for nearly every vine planted in the Cape. Growers didn't even bother giving it a name of its own for a while — they just called it "the Wine Grape," because in South Africa, for the better part of a century, that's essentially what wine was. Then phylloxera tore through the Cape in the 1880s, the industry spent decades clawing its way back under a quota system that didn't do the variety any favors, and Chardonnay eventually took the throne Semillon had held for a hundred years. Today, Semillon is more or less extinct in South Africa as a variety anyone plants on purpose.

Except in three places.

Eikhof, planted in 1902. A sandy-soiled parcel from 1942. And La Colline, planted in 1936. Three vineyards that simply kept growing while an entire variety quietly disappeared around them — old enough to have been alive when Semillon was still the Cape's default grape, and still alive now that almost nobody remembers it was.

Those three vineyards are the entire foundation of the 2022 Boekenhoutskloof Semillon.

Boekenhoutskloof itself was founded in 1993 by Marc Kent and a handful of partners, including the late Tim Rands of Vinimark, and Kent built the business on a fairly shrewd idea: let commercially successful, everyday-drinking labels like Porcupine Ridge and The Chocolate Block carry the financial weight, so that something like a tiny lot of 120-year-old Semillon never has to justify itself on a spreadsheet. It's the reason those three vineyards are still in the ground instead of having been pulled out decades ago for something more fashionable.

Credit for what actually happens in the glass belongs to winemaker Gottfried Mocke, who noticed something unusual in the old Eikhof vineyard: scattered among the 1902 Semillon vines, a small amount of Muscat d'Alexandria had been growing right alongside it the entire time, an old-fashioned interplanting nobody had bothered to separate out. Since 2016, rather than farming it away as an inconvenience, Mocke has kept two to three percent of it in the blend on purpose. It's not there to make a statement. It's there because it's always been there, and pretending otherwise would be its own kind of dishonesty.

The wine is whole-bunch pressed and spends fourteen months on its lees, split between new French oak and concrete egg, without much else done to it beyond time and patience. What comes out is lemon zest, hay, jasmine and chamomile up front, moving into mandarin, yellow plum and peach skin, with marzipan, saffron and nutmeg working underneath and a thread of lemongrass running through the whole thing. The texture is where it gets interesting — that classic Semillon waxiness, almost lanolin, carried by real acid rather than weight, finishing crisp, mineral and long.

If your experience of Semillon begins and ends with a supporting role in a Bordeaux blend, or an occasional bottle from the Hunter Valley, I understand the hesitation. This isn't quite either of those. This is what an entire country's forgotten default grape tastes like when three surviving old vineyards are still there to make the case — something older, stranger and considerably more serious than its reputation, or lack of one, would suggest.

Don't let the unfamiliar name scare you off. It's exactly the kind of bottle Terroir Club exists for!