Fleur du Cap Unfiltered Merlot 2009 Coastal Region Western Cape South Africa 75cl

Fleur du Cap has been part of the Cape wine landscape since 1968, its wines maturing in Die Bergkelder, the cellar bored into the Papegaaiberg at Stellenbosch. The Unfiltered range is the label’s flagship, made without fining or filtration so that texture, aroma and flavour reach the glass untouched.

This is a Merlot drawn from the broader Coastal Region of the Western Cape, the swathe of cooler, mostly maritime districts that give Cape reds their freshness. Merlot from these sites tends to offer generous fruit with a savoury, earthy edge. Bottled unfiltered, it was always built for gentle development in the cellar.

The wine now carries real bottle age. The 2009 vintage is well over a decade on, and this is a mature bottle to be enjoyed for what time has given it rather than for primary fruit. Buying an older vintage like this is really about the extra complexity that only years in bottle can bring.

Expect concentrated strawberry and red berry fruit that has begun to sweeten and soften, threaded with white chocolate, a cooling hint of mint and warm, spicy oak. There is a gentle, tobacco-like earthiness now sitting behind the fruit. The palate is rounded and mellow, its tannins long since resolved into something smooth and easy.

This is a bottle for drinking now rather than keeping. Open it with roast lamb, slow-cooked game or a mushroom dish, and give it a little air to let the mature, savoury notes settle. A wine to linger over on a cold evening.