Sakkie Mouton Family Wines Dawn of the Salty Tongues Syrah 2024 Rated and Reviewed…

July 17, 2025 ~ Greg Sherwood MW ~ Leave a comment

This is the third red release from Sakkie Mouton, one of the Cape’s most exciting winemaking talents who seems to keep going from strength to strength. With a now well-established quality track record for his crisp, complex, saline white wines from the Weskus, his wines have become incredibly sought after including his red wines.

Simply speaking, you can sell a cultish brand once, maybe twice, but if it doesn’t deliver the quality collectors and connoisseurs expect that’s where it will break down. Sakkie’s followers are however true converts, buying and drinking his wines vintage after vintage, standing as a true testament to the authentic character and ever-increasing quality of his wines.

The Dawn of the Salty Tongues label is a reference to the rise of the West Coast as a new wine region and showcases divers picking grapes under the ocean, which contributes to the “salty” taste of the palate. “Salty Tongues” also happens to be Weskus slang for the rather spicy language some of the local farmers and fishermen are known to use on a regular basis!

Sakkie Mouton Family Wines Dawn of the Salty Tongues Syrah 2024, WO Oliphants Rivier, 12.86% Abv.

2.6g/l RS | 6.1g/l TA | 3.40pH

The Salty Tongues Syrah 2024 is a 100% Syrah red made from grapes sourced from vineyards in Vredendal located 25 kilometres from the West Coast Atlantic Ocean that were picked early morning to preserve freshness before being destemmed, with 30% of whole bunches lining the bottom of the open top fermenters. After fermentation, the wine was aged for 12 months in 500 litre barrels before being bottled unfiltered and unfined. Planted in 1999, these 26-year-old vineyards are starting to yield some incredible quality with striking aromatics of pressed violets and lavender, bramble berries and pomegranate before hints of black cherry, blood oranges, nori seaweed and bloody raw meat develop. This 2024 shows more dry extract, more substance, and more depth of fruit and oak spice than either of the previous two vintages. With incredible elegance, vivacious tangy acids and a silky plush depth, the palate never loses its mouthwatering red and black berry Weskus salinity that gently melts away into a concentrated, intense, piercing finish. This is a beautifully crafted red wine from Sakkie. Drink on release and over the next 8 to 10 years.

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

The Sakkie Mouton Wines are imported into the UK for retail and private clients by South African specialist merchant Museum Wines and for On-trade and Scotland by Wood Winters.

The Collector Hysteria Continues Unabated As Sakkie Mouton Releases His Second Vintage of Sand Erf Vermentino 2022…

January 25, 2023January 26, 2023 ~ Greg Sherwood MW ~ Leave a comment

This unique white wine is sourced from a tiny patch of Vermentino vines grown on orange sandy soils in Koekenaap planted in 2017, and which are located only 15 kilometres from the cold Atlantic Ocean up the barren West Coast. The unwaveringly maritime and saline characteristics of this dry coastal terroir up the West Coast has become almost synonymous as Sakkie Mouton’s signature style and these particular Vermentino grapes are located no more than 600 metres away from his old vine Crayfish Chenin Blanc vineyard with its decomposed sandstone soils with pockets of limestone which lend great minerality and low pH’s to the finished wines.

After tasting a few tank samples with Sakkie Mouton at the Cape Wine Trade Fair in Cape Town in October 2022, it was inevitable that the excitement would build until he released his second Vermentino vintage. More importantly, after Cape Wine, I made the five hour trek up the West Coast with Sakkie after the trade fair to go and visit not only his famous Revenge of the Crayfish Chenin Blanc vineyard, but also the two long rows of Vermentino that were planted originally as an experimental grape.

The experimental Vermentino rows planted in 2017 planted on Ramsey rootstocks to help against nematodes in the soils.

The 2022 Sand Erf was harvested in two separate parcels, with the first parcel getting 12 hours on the skins before pressing, and the second parcel getting whole brunch pressed. After pressing, both parcels were blended together. After a one month fermentation, the wine was racked into one 300 litre barrel for ageing for four months with regular stirring of the lees.

Sakkie Mouton surveying his two rows of experimental Vermentino along side wider plantings of Chenin Blanc.

The wine was bottled as Wine of Origin Koekenaap, unfiltered and unfined, with just the smallest addition of sulphur. While the one parcel only saw 12 hours of skin contact, Sakkie feels this factor has had a significantly positive influence on the finished wine, helping it to portray a slightly fuller, fleshier, more textural expression in the glass.

Sakkie Mouton Family Wines Sand Erf Vermentino 2022, WO Koekenaap, 11.93% Abv.

1.4g/l RS | 6.9g/l TA | 3.4pH

This white wine is classic Wes Kus misfit Sakkie Mouton at his best. The nose is packed full of youthful cream soda and rock candy aromatics before notes of peach kernals, crunchy green pear, white blossom and lime peel emerge to spar with the ever-present layers of maritime salinity, dried kelp, nori seaweed and rock salt complexity. The extra time on the skins lends the palate just that little extra fleshy, glycerol weight and roundness in the mouth to balance the intense briney rock salt salinity. The palate remains rapier fresh and precise but just that little bit broader and more architecturally layered, revealing a delicious green apple freshness and white peach and dried herb nuances on the long, generous finish. This is a wine that speaks of a specific maritime terroir and its harsh corresponding wind-swept coastal environment. In Koekenaap, the people are as hardy as the vines, but both are equally generous and expressive when handled correctly. A beautiful follow-up release that grows in confidence like Sakkie’s very own winemaking prowess. Drink this wine on release with wild Wes Kus oysters or fresh line fish or else watch it unfurl extra layers of complexity over the coming 3 to 5+ years.

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

Life imitating art… Sakkie is a keen musician like his grandfather, who is featured on the 2022 label.

Baby Unicorns Taste Even Better – Drinking the New Giuseppe Rinaldi Barbera d’Alba 2015…

December 1, 2017 ~ Greg Sherwood MW ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes even just mentioning a wine repeatedly is enough to add to the collector feeding frenzy let alone actually tasting and rating a wine. But any Italian or Piedmont follower will already be fully aware of the explosion in demand for the cult wines of Giuseppe Rinaldi over the past 2 to 3 years. Forget trying to buy their Tre Tine Barolo blend let alone his Brunate Cru! Even sourcing the “lesser” Dolcetto, Freisa and Barbera d’Alba have become a major challenge in itself.

But it is only when you taste the wines that you realise why this traditionally leaning producer has acquired the cult following that they have. The wines are beautifully classical, pure, unadulterated, subtly mineral, full of energy and tension and of course, utterly delicious.

The 2015 growing season in Piedmont included the region’s hottest July since 1880. That might have endangered grape quality but plentiful reserves of water after a wet winter kept vines from shutting down, and growers were better adapted to managing leaf canopies this time compared to the torrid 2003 vintage, thus being able to keep the vines healthy and promote more even grape ripening.

July and August were also windy, keeping air circulating through the leaves and avoiding excessive heat under the canopies. Vineyards higher on the slopes may have enjoyed a slight advantage over warmer, less breezy downhill spots, enjoying longer ripening periods. In addition, higher diurnal temperature swings in September provided the right conditions for ripening both sugars and tannins in not only Nebbiolo but also Barbera.

Giuseppe Rinaldi Barbera d’Alba 2015, Piedmont, 14 Abv.

From a super opulent ripe vintage in Piedmont comes yet another profound expression of Barbera from Giuseppe Rinaldi. The aromatics are so rich and exotic with sweet baking spices, black berry fruits tinged with brûléed oak spice notes and buttered brown toast. This wine is very expressive but also beautifully complex with fine palate weight and superb intense fruit concentration. Multi layered and textural, the brûléed black berry fruits reach all corners of the mouth with creamy blueberry and black cherry depth and such delicious fleshy, harmonious elegance and power. Certainly a facet of this superb vintage, this wine has a definite feel of more modernity and purity of fruit than previously vintages. Really lush, attractive, and so mouth watering and drinkable. You wouldn’t expect anything less from this iconic cult producer. Drink now to 2028+

(Wine Safari Score: 94+/100 Greg Sherwood MW)

Make Guerra not War – Tasting the New Garnacha not Guerra 2016 Cult Red From Sardinia…

November 28, 2017November 29, 2017 ~ Greg Sherwood MW ~ Leave a comment

Seems fitting to review this wine on the same day its winemaker Mick O’Connell is coming over from Dublin, Ireland, to launch it to 150 private clients in the heart of London. What started out as a hobby project in Sardinia (where is wife is from) during his Master of Wine studies, has grown steadily into a proper business with rented premises and leased vineyards.

Production was basically doubled from 360 bottles for the maiden 2015 release to over 600 bottles for the 2016 vintage. Needless to say, lessons were learnt and Mick’s experience augmented ever so slightly to ensure that the follow up effort is even more impressive than the first. This is a wonderful, “smashable” style of wine as wine journalist Jamie Goode called the 2015, that has silent aspirations, but in essence, is an honest, vibrant, refreshing wine that goes wonderfully with almost any Mediterranean food. At £24.95, this is one little cult wine you won’t want to miss out on.

Garnacha not Guerra 2016, Vino Rosso, Sardinia, 13 Abv.

This follow up vintage to the maiden 2015 Garnacha not Guerra is a high achiever, leaping out the starting blocks with an exotic perfumed bouquet of cherry blossom, crushed black pepper corns, strawberry confit, cranberry coulis and red cherry sweets. On the periphery there are notes of iron, blood, fresh bresaola and cured meats mingling with spicy red bramble berry fruit nuances. The palate is showy and confident with an upfront exotic medley of red fruits that gives one a sense that this Garnacha is altogether more serious, mineral, spicy and structured than its predecessor. Texturally however, the wine remains very focused and deliciously accessible showing delicate dry lacy tannins, harmonious fresh acids and an intriguing pithy, peppery cherry skin grip on the finish. Drink this cracker jack wine now, preferably with food, and over the next 3 to 5+ years.

(93/100 Greg Sherwood MW)