On a Flight of Furious Fancies
Learn More About This Wine
One site: the Polkadraai Hills; one grape: Chenin Blanc. This bottling currently uses one vineyard, on Karibib farm on False Bay. The bony granite soils inexplicably, but undeniably, in concert with the harsh winds of the South Easter, provide a racy expression of Chenin Blanc grown in a warm climate.
Angus considers this to be as quintessentially South African wine: old vine Chenin, grown without irrigation on the coastal hillsides of Stellenbosch.
Grapes are hand picked and cooled overnight. The following morning they are pressed as whole bunches. No sulphur, yeast, acid, enzymes or water were added.
Very cloudy juice was transferred to neutral oak barrels, with only the heaviest of solids left behind. Fermentation took place over 4 weeks, after which about half of the barrels were sulphured for the first time. Wines were bottled in December after having spent 11 months in barrels with no racking or fining.
This vintage is steely and tight in texture: kelp, citrus creams and apples jump forth. The palate is equally tight. The acidity is ripe and rushes across the palate with waves of white stone fruit and golden delicious apples.
The name is inspired by an anonymous Medieval English poem, “Tom O’Bedlam”. This can be read many ways – it is quite literally a tale of Angus going off in flight and producing, zealously, this wine project. Or of the historic South African wine industry as a whale, producing wine in the corner of this mysterious continent. Or more recently, of the pioneering winemakers of the last 25 years, revitalising the industry. Or, in a profound sense, this Bacchic compulsion as humans, that wherever we go, we must make wine.
Angus Paul makes his wines in the Karibib estate, so he doesn’t have far to go to harvest this Chenin Blanc from a 1982 block on the property. Made in a low-intervention style, with minimal sulphites and full malolactic, it has a briny, sea breeze top note, layers of oatmeal, citrus and sourdough bread and a tangy granitic finish. Tim Atkin MW – South Africa Report 2026 – 95 points
