Bellevue Reserve Cabernet Franc 2023 Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa 75cl

Cabernet Franc is quietly having a moment in the Cape, and Bellevue’s Reserve version has become one of the wines that critics reach for to make the case. It shows how far the Bottelary Hills estate has come, turning a grape often used for blending into a serious, single-variety wine in its own right.

This is 100 percent Cabernet Franc, matured for around 20 to 21 months in new French oak. That is a bold amount of new wood, but the grape’s natural perfume, herbal lift and fine structure carry it, gaining cedar and spice while staying fresh and precise. It is one of the most distinctive wines in the Reserve range.

The 2023 harvest was small, cool and demanding, with a wet season and late rains raising disease pressure across Stellenbosch. For an aromatic, structured grape like Cabernet Franc, careful picking mattered, and the payoff is a wine with vivid perfume, fresh acidity and finely drawn tannins rather than any sense of over-ripeness.

Classic Cabernet Franc through and through: a perfumed nose of cedar, spice, tree bark and dried herbs framing black berries. The palate is cool and crisp, with baking herbs, tea leaf and a distinct lead-pencil minerality carried by fine tannins and bright acidity. Elegant rather than heavy, it will develop for a decade. Lovely with venison, herbed lamb or roast duck.

Greg Sherwood MW scored the 2023 a superb 96 points, calling it among the top expressions of Cabernet Franc in the country. If you love a fragrant Chinon or Saumur-Champigny from the Loire, or a herb-and-graphite Right Bank Bordeaux, this speaks your language. It is a connoisseur’s red, and quietly one of the estate’s proudest wines.