On a Flight of Furious Fancies Chenin Blanc 2022, Angus Paul, Stellenbosch

This vintage is open in body and tight in texture: kelp, citrus creams and apples jump forth. The palate is equally tight, but rounder than previous vintages. The acidity is ripe and rushes across the palate with waves of white stone fruit and golden delicious apples.

Angus Paul has a passion for South African heritage varietals, focussing on Chenin Blanc and Pinotage, and believes in minimal intervention winemaking – a combination that clearly works well.

The name is inspired by an anonymous Medieval English poem, “Tom O’Bedlam”. This can be read many ways – it is quite literally a tale of us going off in flight and producing, zealously, this wine project. Or of the historic South African wine industry as a whole, producing wine in the corner of this mysterious continent. Or more recently, of the pioneering winemakers of the last 25 years, revitalising the industry. Or, in a profound sense, this Bacchic compulsion as humans, that wherever we go, we must make wine.

Grapes were whole bunch pressed and the cloudy juice was transferred to neutral oak barrels without the addition of sulphur, yeast, acid or enzymes. Fermentation took place in barrel, with about 50% going through Malolactic fermentation too.