Seven Springs At The Cambridge Tasting

The final three wines at The Cambridge Tasting were from Tim Pearson's Seven Springs in South Africa.

Tim originally ran his own service business before moving into wine - and although we've yet to meet in person, I sense he brings a thoroughly practical and professional approach to the business of making and selling wine.

Like everyone else who had provided wines for the tasting, he had agreed to be online for a tweet-up - albeit from a much sunnier South Africa, along with his winemaker Riana Van Der Merwe.

I had debated the overall running order with Davy, who had procured the use of a room at Downing college for the tasting - his theory was that as the least expensive of all the wines, they should go first ahead of the more ambitious samples.

My approach and our final plan was to put the wines in order of ripeness - the light Swiss wines first, big Bordeaux next and the sunny Saffers to finish off.

With the snow falling on the ground, we brought in the 2011 Sauvignon Blanc and kicked off the final part of the tasting.

The general consensus was that all the wines were well-made and good examples of their type and price point.

Other comments echoed my own feeling that these are primarily crowd-pleasers - reliable, well-made, fruit-driven. There's nothing not to like from these very pleasant quaffers.

Whether something more interesting and challenging will emerge as these young-vine wines gain a bit of age remains to be seen.

2011 Sauvignon Blanc aromatic with ripe passionfruit; good and well-made in what was deemed a "commercial" style

2011 Pinot Noir "Young Vines" Marlborough-style Pinot; lots of ripe fruit, pleasantly silky texture; deemed a "picnic wine". Those who had been unimpressed by the Adank Pinots felt this was a better example of a textbook Pinot style. For me, it was an easy-drinking quaffer - Pinot without the tears.

2010 Syrah lots of ripe fruit; again, nothing untoward and an easy drinker.

Aoife Maxwell - who has reviewed the tasting here - deemed the Sauvignon one of her top wines of the whole afternoon.

More on The Cambridge Tasting
Overview
Adank (Switzerland)
Crus Bourgeois 2010 (and 2000)

Other related articles
Seven Springs Sauvignon Blanc
Denise Medrano on Seven Springs Syrah 2010
Tara O'Leary on Seven Springs Pinot Noir 2011
South Africa's Arabella Wines - Shiraz Viognier, Chenin Blanc

Links
Seven Springs Winery - website, twitter
Winemaker Riana Van Der Merwe on twitter