Muscat de Frontignan

The world is opening back up, so it's time to take a trip today. We're heading to the Western Cape, as it's known region of South Africa. The trip in is long. We took a flight to Johannesburg, non-stop, but really long being masked, and planned to head to the Cape Town area by car. But, after a 17 hour flight, 14 more hours in the car was not what we wanted, so we grabbed another flight to Cape Town and headed just slightly northwest.

People who grew up in the US in my generation will remember all the time we spent learning about explorers in our history and geography classes. In particular, here, we might recall that a Portuguese explorer by the name of Vasco da Gama became the first to round the Cape of Good Hope (technically, it was one of his captains named Bartolomeu Dias, but history, at least when I learned it in school, doesn't tell us that) at the southern tip of Africa thereby 'connecting' the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, at least for European explorers. It was a sea route to India and the spices that Europeans sought.

The Portuguese didn't stop to check out the wine, likely because there wasn't any yet. That came when French settlers in the 17th century brought with them cuttings from some of the vines from the southern part of France. Just to the southwest of Montpelier, right on the sea, lies the tiny AOC of Frontignan.

Muscat de Frontignan is a white grape. It grows best with warm days and somewhat cold nights in soils that have natural minerality from local brackish and salt waters. Such if is the area of Frontignan and of the alluvial fan that is the Western Cape.

Today, we are tasting some of the finest productions from this wonderful grape. The wine in front of us is orange in color, having been harvested quite late. So, it's a wine that while not insipidly sugary sweet has nearly 200 grams per liter of residual sugar. That's enough to be classified as trockenbeerenauslese in Germany.

Served cool, this wine is an absolute stunner. Just a tiny sip coats the palate and produces flavors that evolve for a good 90 seconds. Starting with a quince marmalade on the palate and white flowers on the noase, our wine evolves with peaches and cream, lichee, honey, almonds, ginger, honeysuckle, and baking spices. 

If you have the opportunity and the bank account as the particular wine we are tasting has skyrocketed in price in recent years, buy as much as you can hold on to. The wine has an easy 30 years on it and likely far more than that if served properly.

Pair this wine with something simple or nothing at all. Vanilla bean ice cream feels like the winner to me, but the real winner is sipping it all by itself.