Pinotage & Walker Bay: The Cape's Own Identity

Pinotage, South Africa's own grape variety created in 1925, has spent decades fighting a reputation problem rooted in poorly made examples from the mid-twentieth century. Today's episode covers the science behind Pinotage's creation, why it earned its controversial reputation and how the best modern examples have moved past it, and then heads to Walker Bay's Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, where the cold Atlantic influence is producing some of the finest cool-climate Pinot Noir made anywhere outside Burgundy.