Le Grand Domaine’s achievement is all the more remarkable because the vineyards are small and relatively young.
You’d be forgiven for thinking, looking at the accompanying photograph, that the bottle of wine festooned with awards and medals is the one recently voted the world’s best Cabernet Sauvignon for 2025.
Actually, it’s the one on the right and the award conferred at the International Wine Challenge (IWC) after two weeks of intensive blind tastings in London is so new, the producers have not yet affixed ratification of its status on the bottle.
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Not that you will easily find the 2022 Grand Vin de Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon in your neighbourhood bottle store or vin boutique in the near future.
According to cellarmaster and head winemaker Debbie Thompson of Le Grand Domaine in Stellenbosch, the wine will only go on sale once stocks of the current vintage are depleted.
“We will, however, be giving the wine-loving public something of a ‘teaser’,” she says, “by producing 100 limited edition wooden boxes presenting the 2020 and 2022 vintages side by side, as well as a similar number containing the 2020, 2021 and 2022 vintages.”
This will happen by the end of September. Good news, Thompson adds, is the estate is looking to establish its flagship Grand Vin de Stellenbosch range locally and most of the award-winning vintage is earmarked for domestic release.
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“When it does go on sale, it will retail competitively at around R350 a bottle.”
Recognition at CapeWine showcase
With August being Women’s Month, the award was a triple triumph for the all-female wine-making team, with Thompson joined by Mosima Mabelebele and Yolande Laubscher.
The Le Grand Vin de Stellenbosch 2022 was also adjudged by the IWC as South Africa’s top Cabernet Sauvignon for the year, which will give the estate bragging rights going into next month’s CapeWine extravaganza.
The event, held every three years, is the leading business showcase of the SA wine industry, attracting interest worldwide.
Equally satisfying for Thompson is that the prize-winning wine is the first vintage for which the grapes were grown exclusively in the estate’s Devon Valley vineyards.
Previous years saw these supplemented by grapes bought from external suppliers.
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A young vineyard with a big future
Le Grand Domaine’s achievement is all the more remarkable because the vineyards are small (less than 11ha, not all given over to producing Cabernet Sauvignon) and relatively young.
“The vines were only six years old for the 2022 vintage,” says Thompson.
Thompson only joined the company in 2020 – at the height of the Covid pandemic – after spending the previous 20 years at Simonsig where she earned something of a reputation of being a sparkling wine specialist.“
There are accolades and there are accolades,” she says. “Stellenbosch is known as ‘The Kingdom of Cabernet’ and to be the first local estate to win the IWC is a huge feather in our caps.
“For the first time, Le Grand Domaine is being talked about in the same breath as Kanonkop, Alto and Rust en Vrede.
“We might be new kids on the block, but we’re serious Cabernet Sauvignon makers.”
