On the 1st August 2017, the second annual Winemag Signature Red Blend Report Awards was held at Villa 47 in Cape Town, with our Fairview Extraño making us proud yet again, winning a 90 point rating by the judging panel. Fairview Winemaker Stephanie Wiid went along to receive the award with open arms.

For this year’s competition, 82 entries were received from 62 producers. These were tasted blind (labels out of sight) by the three-person panel consisting of Christian Eedes, Roland Peens and James Pietersen, scoring done according to the 100-point quality scale. The event called for wines which were “distinctive of their originators” and instead of the usual practice of dividing them into various sub-groups according to style, the judges tasted them as one continuous line-up – the thinking being that the fundamentals of wine appreciation such as complexity and balance should apply when it came to making quality assessments.

This new way of thinking is exactly in line with what Fairview’s Charles Back has always endeavoured to do – planting varieties best suited to our climate and soils – and we are so exalted to be reaping the results of those rather against-the-grain earlier decisions. Made up of a rather unusual Spanish blend of Tempranillo, Grenache and Carignan, our Extraño (meaning stranger in Spanish) is no doubt a bit of a surprise when compared to it’s more traditionally favoured counterparts of Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot. But Extraño has really come into its own this year, winning a spot in the Top 100 2017 competition, a bronze in the Wine Label Design Awards 2017 and now a 90 score for the Winemag Signature Red Blend Report. You shouldn’t mind talking to this stranger! Available online for R100. Buy here.

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We are so proud to announce our winning labels from this year’s 2017 Wine Label Design Awards! Our Fairview Extraño came in with a Bronze medal, while our new Bloemcool Range shined with a Silver award. Both labels were designed by the very talented team at Jane Says Design, headed up by Victoria Peter.

According the Winemag.co.za, the Wine Label Design competition seeks “to reward the best design and packaging for bottled wine made in South Africa and judging criteria include originality of concept, execution, shelf appeal and effectiveness as a piece of communication”. The news came on Wednesday, 29th March, and the results were warmly received at the Fairview farm.

Fairview’s Extraño received a face lift late last year, drawing on inspiration from the Spanish varieties of used for this powerful red blend. The label is a carefully executed melange of Spanish-styled typography, using a vibrant colour palate of gold and red. The main icon is a peacock fanning its tail feathers on the label, which harks back to the tale of when we spotted a ‘stranger’ floating through the jumble of our old Tempranillo vines. Inspired by this monarchical peacock – who has now made a home among our vineyard – our winemakers have carefully tamed Tempranillo’s temperamental streak by integrating fellow Hispanic varieties Grenache and Carignan.

In quite sharp contrast, the Bloemcool labels – our newest range also released last year April – is a very clean and minimal design. The range takes its name from Bloemcoolfontein (meaning ‘cauliflower fountain’ directly translated from Dutch), which was the original name of the Fairview farm before the Back family took ownership. Drawing on our heritage, the diamond shaped label is made out of handmade, recycled paper with cauliflower seeds embedded into it. The idea is to plant the label once the bottle of wine is finished, and to grow your very own bloemkool (cauliflower) at home, encouraging a sustainable approach to the range, which uses recycled bottles and minimizes printing by not including back labels.

The Extraño and the Bloemcool range are both available on our online store: https://www.fairview.co.za/shop/

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