2012 The FMC

Marketing-savvy Ken Forrester now presents his line-up in three ranges: the "Petit" wines, which he describes as "easygoing wines to drink young," the Ken Forrester Range, "my middle-of-the-road range," and the Icon Range. Forrester has 120 acres of vines on his Stellenbosch estate, and farms close to 300 additional acres, much of it in cooler sites in Elim and Darling, paying by the hectare rather than by the quantity of grapes.

I tasted his sizable collection with Forrester and his more laid-back alter ego Martin Meinert, who assists with winemaking here in addition to bottling wines under his own label. Interestingly, Forrester and Meinert's brief capsule descriptions of recent Cape vintage were distinctly different from what I heard elsewhere in April. For starters, Forrester described 2009 as "a slower, cooler, longer growing season than 2008." The earlier vintage, he told me, was warmer, with a terrific heat spike just before the harvest. "Two thousand seven," he went on, "was hot and dry, with massive heat spike." Forrester and Meinert describe the 2010s as "big, bold, fleshy and expressive--monstrous." Two thousand eleven was a ripe year but 2012 was tricky and more herbal, with low alcohol. And Meinert is not wild about the 2014 white wines. "There was heat, and the acids dropped quickly," he explained.