Mullineux & Leeu Family Wines
Updated: Sep 11, 2019
In August 2018 we decided to finally head to South Africa for our annual family vacation. We packed up the kids & braced for an overnight trip through the UK & The Netherlands before landing in Cape Town. The 1st 5 days of our trip was spent in Cape Town at The 12 Apostles Hotel & Spa which was truly an exceptional experience whilst also catching up with my family who all still live in South Africa. After 5 fun days in Cape Town we switched hotels to La Residence Franschhoek.
On one of our last days I managed to talk my wife Jennifer into us going for another day of wine tasting in the Franschhoek Valley. We handed over the kids to their Aunty Shirley & our driver picked us up at about 10am & we instructed the hotel to please get us to some high end but delicious wineries in the valley.
Stop #1 was Mullineux & Leeu Family Wines.
The Tasting Experience.
The tasting experience was incredible. Staff were very knowledgeable about the history, the wine and for sure knew how to look after us. We had no idea a year later we would be part of their wine club & shipping in cases and cases of their wines to our home in Dallas TX.
Getting into the tasting ( at 10:30am ) we learned that Andrea & Chris Mullineux make a range of Single Terroir Syrah wines. ( known as Shiraz in South Africa & Australia ) On their farm in the Swartland region of Cape Town the soils contain small parcels of Shale / Schist, Granite & Iron. These characteristics of the soil express themselves in very unique & tasty wines even though the wines are the same grape varietal, & are made in the exact same way.
The wines we purchased that day that stood out to us were the Schist Syrah, the Syrah Blend (oh yeah they blend all the Syrah's together to get a very smooth easy drinker) Old Vines white blend & the Leeu Passant Chardonnay.
In the 2019 Tim Atkin ( Master of wine ) South African report Mullineux every one of their wines scored over 90 points.
MULLINEUX 90 Kloof Street Chenin Blanc 2018 90 Kloof Street Swartland Rouge 2017 94 Old Vines White 2018 93 Syrah 2017 97 Straw Wine 2018 94 GRANITE Chenin 2018
93 QUARTZ Chenin "Leliefontein" 2018 95 GRANITE Syrah 2017 95 SCHIST Syrah "Roundstone" 2017 96 IRON Syrah 2017 95 CWG Semillon Gris 2018
LEEU PASSANT 96 Stellenbosch Chardonnay 2017 96 Dry Red Wine 2017 93 CWG Radicales Libres 2014
The results of the report do really show just what great things Andrea & Chris are doing for the South African wine industry & I am looking forward to more great wines coming from them in the future. I have since joined their wine club and looking forward to getting my 1st club shipment from them soon.
#drinkwine #winetrips #swartlandwine #franschhoekwine #mullineuxfamilywine