El Bandito Cortez Chenin Blanc 2018

Made in tiny quantities from a vineyard planted in 1972, Testalonga’s El Bandito Cortez Chenin Blanc is light but super concentrated. Unfined and unfiltered – making it vegan friendly – this white races out of the glass with freshly baked bread, apples and pears, orange peel, dried herbs, hay, underripe peach and salted nuts. With its deep colour, chunky viscosity and tremendous energy, it’s like Jura meets South Africa with dash of Fino Sherry. And that latter comparison is how we like to treat it, serve it alongside tapas, salted almonds, briny olives and nibbles.

Craig and Carla Hawkins are two of South Africa’s most talented and experimental winemakers. Craig formerly made wine at Lammershoek, but was keen to push the limits of conventional wine production. So he and Carla started their own project: Testalonga. Their wild-fermented natural wines are esoteric, unconventional, low in sulphur and are some of the most exciting wines on the planet. Strangely, they are often refused export certification for their lack of typicity, but what this really means is that Testalonga’s wines just aren’t like everybody else’s.