Ask most wine lovers what Chenin Blanc tastes like, and they’ll give you one answer. Ask South Africa’s old vines, and you’ll get three.
Chenin Blanc is South Africa’s most widely planted old vine variety — accounting for 2,558 of the country’s 5,417 certified heritage hectares, according to SAWIS data published by the Old Vine Project in 2025. That’s nearly half of all old vine plantings in the country. It’s been growing here since the 17th century. It survived the phylloxera epidemic that wiped out most of the world’s vineyards. It built the brandy industry. And yet, for much of its history, it was treated as a bulk grape — planted everywhere, valued by volume rather than character.
What makes old vine Chenin Blanc so compelling is how dramatically it responds to where it’s grown. The same variety, farmed on different soils and in different climates, produces wines that share very little in common. Deeper root systems in older vines draw from further down in the soil profile — which means whatever is distinctive about a site gets amplified, not diluted. Terroir, in other words, becomes more legible the older the vine.
At The Old Vine Festival, we’re featuring three expressions of old vine Chenin Blanc from three completely different South African regions. Tasting them side by side is the clearest argument we know for why terroir isn’t just a buzzword.
Stellenbosch — Kaapzicht “Kliprug”
The name Kliprug means “rocky back” in Afrikaans — named by the farm workers who spent their days navigating the iron-rich stones that litter this particular ridge on the Kaapzicht estate. The vineyard was planted in 1982 on weathered granite topsoil over crumbly clay subsoil, on the north-western slopes of the Bottelary Hills in Stellenbosch.
These are dryland bush vines — unirrigated, which means the roots dig deep. At over 40 years old, they yield no more than 4 tons per hectare. The resulting wine is dense and concentrated, with bruised yellow fruits, white peach, honeyed pineapple, and a richly textured body built on creamy lees. It carries the weight and warmth you’d expect from Stellenbosch, tempered by the elevation and the iron-rich rock beneath the surface.
Kliprug is Chenin Blanc as Stellenbosch understands it: generous, structured, built to age.
Bot River — Villion Wines “Henning”
Bot River sits within the Walker Bay appellation on the Cape South Coast — a coastal pocket where the proximity of the Atlantic shapes everything about how the grapes ripen. The Villion “Henning” Chenin Blanc is sourced from 40-year-old vines here, hand-harvested and fermented in barrel using indigenous yeasts, with no additions to steer the wine in any particular direction.
The maritime influence is everything in Bot River. Cool sea air slows ripening, preserving acidity and giving the grapes a longer time to develop complexity before they’re picked. Where Kliprug leads with fruit weight, the Henning opens with a saline, oyster-shell character that is impossible to find in an inland vineyard. There are notes of pickled quince, apricot, and tropical fruit alongside a persistent chalky, flinty finish — a wine that winemaker Kobie Viljoen describes as carrying the maritime origin of its site in every glass.
Villion “Henning” is Chenin Blanc as the ocean understands it: precise, saline, alive.
Swartland — Kasteelberg Old Vine Chenin Blanc
The Swartland is one of South Africa’s most celebrated wine regions — a dry, rugged landscape inland from the coast whose global reputation was built from the late 1990s onwards by pioneering winemakers including Eben Sadie, the Mullineux family, and Adi Badenhorst. The Kasteelberg mountain rises above the Riebeek Valley as one of its most distinctive landmarks, and the Kasteelberg Old Vine Chenin Blanc is a blend of several old vine parcels planted across the 1980s on its shale and schist slopes.
Shale and schist create wines with a different character from the granite soils of Stellenbosch: more restrained, more mineral, with a linear quality that comes from the mountain’s specific geology. The Kasteelberg Chenin Blanc carries lemon zest, pear, and a dry, textured finish with a herbaceous lift. The vines are dry-farmed on the lower slopes of the mountain, relying entirely on natural rainfall in one of South Africa’s most arid wine regions.
Kasteelberg Chenin Blanc is Chenin Blanc as the mountain understands it: mineral, focused, uncompromising.
What Terroir Actually Means
The word “terroir” gets used so often in wine writing that it can start to feel abstract. But put these three Chenin Blancs in front of you — same grape variety, roughly similar vine ages, all from old vine certified heritage vineyards — and it becomes something tangible.
One is warm and generous. One is saline and precise. One is mineral and linear. The grape didn’t change. The soil did. The climate did. The proximity to the ocean did. And in old vines, those differences are amplified: deeper root systems mean the vine is drawing from further down in the soil profile, and lower yields mean the fruit carries a higher concentration of whatever that soil has to offer.
This is why old vine Chenin Blanc from three different South African regions tastes so dramatically different. And it’s why, once you’ve tasted them side by side, the concept of terroir stops being a word and becomes an experience.
Taste Them at The Old Vine Festival
All three Chenin Blancs will be pouring at The Old Vine Festival — Singapore’s first festival dedicated to South Africa’s certified old vine wines. Tickets for the Walk-Around Tasting at BoundbyWine on 27 June are still available — two sessions to choose from.
Book your tasting session at the Free-Roaming Tasting event Session 1 (2–3.30pm) or Session 2 (4–5.30pm). Get your tickets before they are sold out.
See you there!
