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Craven Wines

Mick and Jeanine Craven welcomed me to their home in Somerset West to taste their latest releases before Mick knocked up a 100-point homemade pizza. The husband and wife team represent the artisanal, natural side of the Cape wine scene, epitomized by their “white” pigmented so “Rosé” that they have annual confrontations getting it past the South African wine board. “We prefer 2022 over 2021,” Mick Craven tells me as he kneads the dough. “We were lucky with the load shedding [electrical blackout], and it made a difference with cooling vats that actually worked in the new winery in a rented industrial warehouse that we converted in 2021. This year was more problematic.” As you might expect, these are minimal intervention, subtle wines that are as much about texture as aromas and flavors. What I like is that they flirt with edginess and “funk” but rarely cross that line so that Craven’s wines avoid falling into the trap of tasting like a philosophy. They just taste…good.

From The A to Z of South Africa (Nov 2023) by Neal Martin

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2022 Chardonnay

Release Price: $30

Color: White

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