Paarl’s innovative, new-kid-on-the-block winery, Brookdale Estate, has earned its first 5-star Platter rating.
The Brookdale Sixteen White Blend 2022 is one of 12 exciting white blends (excluding Bordeaux blends), to walk away with the coveted 5-star accolade in the Platter’s by Diners Club South African Wine Guide 2024.
Brookdale Sixteen is a celebration of the lost art of field blend winemaking.
- The wine is comprised of 16 varietals, interplanted as bush vines without rhyme or reason. Grapes are therefore ‘blended’ in the ‘field’, rather than grown and vinified separately before blending in the cellar.
The second vintage of the Brookdale Sixteen (2022), is described as having a sense of quiet luxury on the opening chords. ‘Thatch, heather, white blossom and French linen give way to green pineapple, lemon balm and fresh honey. The fruit weaves richer on the palate, silken ribbons of peach, apricot and peardrop. A squeeze of limey acidity enlivens and sculpts around lush fruit, going flintier to the side palate and evolving into an appetising mineral-saltiness on the finish.’
Brookdale Estate is the pinnacle of the Rudd family’s passions. Here, Mediterranean varietals, a unique Paarl terroir and unusual winemaking techniques are brought together under the visionary hand of owner, Tim Rudd, and winemaker, Kiara Scott Farmer. She says: ‘We seek to explore our terroir not only with a site-specific approach, but also a vintage-specific one. The Brookdale Sixteen Field Blend exemplifies our mission to explore the naturally occurring microclimates, which has produced a true South African field blend, as nature might have intended if she were a winemaker.’
The Brookdale Sixteen White Blend 2022 is a wine of character, intrigue and flavour, and a perfect evolution for the Brookdale wine range. This includes the Brookdale Chenin Blanc Old Vine 2021, and the Brookdale Bradbourne White Blend 2022, both having notched up a 4½ star score in Platter’s 2024; while in Brookdale’s lifestyle range the Mason Road Chenin Blanc 2022 and the Mason Road GSM 2022 both earned their solid 4-star ratings too.
