Pick a Year, Any Year.

This is a wine which has never let us down, and we always go back to as one of our favourites. It is just one of those great value for money wines where you know you'll get a great glass of wine from it every time. This is a little South African gem of a wine, and even with the import duties here in Australia, it is well worth putting it in the shopping basket.

No, it's not perfect, but it does have all the makings of a wine which Mrs MJ and I enjoy. Everyone has different taste, and preferences. We simply both find this one particularly pleasing to our taste buds, and for around $15 (AUD) it is hard to beat in bang for your buck.

Kanonkop Kadette Cape Blend is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon - 38%, Pinotage - 33%, Merlot - 23%, and Cabernet Franc - 6%. Last night we had ourselves a bottle of the 2016 vintage; our first taste of the 2016 vintage. We've had just about every vintage from 2009, and haven't been left disappointed by any of them. They are consistently good. The combination of grape varietals in this blend work very well together to give you a wine full of flavour an complexity.

Every mouthful is bursting with flavours of cherries, plums, pepper and spice. It has a silky smooth, soft but strong tannin, and an almost smokey follow-through. The time spent in small 225 liter french oak nevers allows the wine to come into good contact with them, to infuse a great structure of tannin, and this 2016 seemed to be a little fresh from that aspect. A few more years in the bottle would probably soften the tannin a little, and bring out a little more balance structure. That being said, we still did enjoy the boldness of the wine.

From a scoring perspective, I almost can't give it one. It's not the "Greatest Wine in the Universe," but for its price, it is unmistakably a really, really good buy. On taste alone, I'd give the 2016 vintage a 3.5 out of 5 (possibly a bit harsh considering the write-up above, but it's no Paul Sauer), but I recon that would easily become a 4 with a bit of ageing. When you bring value for money into the equation, you've got yourself a cracker wine on the cheap here.

The 2015 we had a few months ago was also really good
If you're browsing the aisles, looking for something to try, and see a bottle of this on the shelf, pick one up and give it a try.

You really can't go wrong with anything that comes out of the Kanonkop stable. They're a class act, and their wines are superb!

Cheers!