Chenin Blanc

Chenin Blanc is the most versatile white grape in the world, and the reason is acidity. It retains extremely high natural acid at every level of ripeness, which means it can be made bone dry, off-dry, sweet, sparkling or botrytised, and every one of those styles works.

The Loire is its home, and the middle Loire around Anjou, Saumur and Touraine produces the full range. Vouvray alone makes sec, demi-sec, moelleux and sparkling from the same vineyards, with the decision taken according to the vintage. Savennières makes dry wine of formidable structure and longevity. Coteaux du Layon and Quarts de Chaume make botrytised sweet wines that last for half a century.

The flavour signature is consistent across all of them: quince, yellow apple, chamomile, wet wool or lanolin, and honey, with a chalky, mineral texture on the tuffeau limestone of the Loire. The lanolin note is characteristic and shows up whether the wine is dry or sweet.

It is a difficult grape in the vineyard — it buds early, ripens late and unevenly, which means multiple passes through the vines, and it is highly prone to botrytis, which is a disaster in the wrong year and the entire point in the right one.

South Africa has more Chenin planted than France, where it was long called Steen and used mostly for brandy and bulk wine. Old bush-vine plantings in the Swartland and Stellenbosch are now producing some of the country's finest whites.

The grape's uneven ripening is not a defect to be managed but the basis of the whole Loire system. Because berries within a bunch reach maturity at different times, pickers go through the vineyard in successive passes — tries — selecting only what is ready. That allows a single vineyard to yield dry wine from the first pass and botrytised sweet wine from the last.

Its high acidity makes it one of the longest-lived white wines in the world. A good Vouvray moelleux or a Savennières can hold for fifty years, and the sweet Layon wines from great vintages are effectively immortal.

South Africa's relationship with it is being rewritten. It was for decades the country's bulk workhorse, distilled or made into cheap off-dry wine, and the old bush-vine plantings that survived are now recognised as a resource no other country has. Those wines — dry, textured, faintly waxy — are among the best value in fine white wine anywhere.