Goedverwacht, Great Expectations, Chardonnay, Robertson, 2023

Here’s the full tasting note for...

Goedverwacht, Great Expectations, Chardonnay, Robertson, 2023

Our favourite wine at this estate - and one which has become more and more popular. The grapes are fermented in tanks holding small French oak blocks; and a few months on the lees gives it a little fat.

Very lightly oaked, a ripe and easy-quaffing New World Chardonnay. Cream and toast greet you on the nose. Well-textured for the price, bright and gently creamy, it makes an easy aperitif or an ideal partner to lightly spicy dishes. Now-2025

Goedverwacht translates from Afrikaans as good hope – or great expectations, hence the labelling. The du Toit family farm no less than 172 hectares of vines along the bends of the Breede river near Bonnievale. The wines are made by father Jan in collaboration with son Gawie. Jan once firmly told me his place in the world of wine in South Africa - "I farm for money, not with money" – distinguishing himself from all the supermarket owners, luxury goods merchants, bankers, jewellers or golfers who have bought wine estates in the Cape. Here there are indisputable economies of scale and modern practice, for example careful matching of variety to soil type and harvesting in the cool of the night and early morning.

The birds on the labels are blue cranes. Antropoides Paradisea is the national bird of South Africa, once commonly sighted in the Breede River Valley but now an endangered species.