This weeks wine of the week, as featured by Michael Olivier, is the Barista Pinotage 2009.

The price: Just under R50 bucks a pop in the supermarkets.

First Impression: Coffee and red berries.

The Story: Bertus Fourie I the creator of the Coffee Pinotage, he made the Diemersfontein and the Café Culture and now he’s MD of Val de Vie Wine and Polo Estate in Paarl where his brother Martin is making the Val de Vie wines and he and Bertus make the Barista.  The effects of oak on wine was the subject of his masters degree.

The Taste: Overwhelming aromas of coffee and sweet sappy red berries like raspberries and there is a touch of cranberry and pomegranate there too with sweet plums and the noble sourness of plum skin.  2009 vintage and drinking really well.

Michael Says:  This is a wine which will get many people to drinking wine. The white wine drinker who does not drink red wine, the beer drinker and the alcopop junkie.

Did You Know? The three components of the success of this wine are the Pinotage Grape, the toasted French Oak Staves and the yeast used for the fermentation.

The small print: A substance called furfuryl is in oak and during fermentation a substance called furfurylthiol is released which smells of coffee.  He French knew about this decades ago when the white wines of the
Graves region also displayed the coffee aromas.

If you would like to see an interview with Bertus and Michael, click here.

Other wine reviews:

• Two Oceans Pinot Noir 2009
• De Krans Pink Port
• Thelema Mountain Red 2006
• Landskroon Paul Hugo Red 2008
• Monis Muscadel
• Morgenhof Fantail Cabernet Sauvignon Cabernet Franc 2006