With all eyes on Sakkie Mouton Family Wines again as he prepares to launch his fabled 2023 Revenge of the Crayfish Chenin Blanc, I thought I would recalibrate my taste buds in preparation with a bottle of his excellent 2022 release. Like all intuitive winemakers, Sakkie has slowly been evolving his winemaking style with every passing vintage, tweaking the oak regime, varying the amount of skin contact, experimenting with more or less lees stirring during elevage, etc… all in the quest to make more complex and exciting wines.

With the 2022 vintage, we see a number of these factors coming together to reveal themselves in the form of a very serious, mature minded expression of Wes Kus Chenin Blanc from Koekenaap.

Sakkie Mouton Family Wines Revenge of the Crayfish 2022 Chenin Blanc, WO Koekenaap, 13.84% Abv.

2.3g/l RS | 7.2g/l TA | 3.15pH

The most recent vintages from Sakkie Mouton have shown his growing winemaking prowess and confidence and this new 2022 Chenin Blanc is no exception. The aromatics are loaded with poached pears, green apple, freshly squeezed lime peel, tangerine over deliciously saline, maritime notes of nori seaweed, kelp, rock salt and crunchy white peach. As always, the palate is fabulously taut and nervy with layer upon layer of liquid minerality, sea breeze, brine, white citrus and Granny Smith apples. But it has been Sakkie Mouton’s ability to conjure up greater mid-palate flesh and textural depth through his evolving handling of skin and lees contact which acts to broaden the mouthfeel and remove any more harder malic edges associated with earlier picked fruit. This new release is a absolute triumph of west coast winemaking! Drink on release after a decent decanting and enjoy comfortably over the next 10 to 12+ years.

(Wine Safari Score: 96+/100 Greg Sherwood MW)

Sakkie Mouton Family Wines are available in the UK on allocation from South African specialist merchant Museum Wines.