2023 Porseleinberg
Estimated value
Buying options
Tasting notes
Porseleinberg has achieved cult status among South African wine lovers – it’s Syrah sitting rightfully alongside the world’s best. News hit earlier this year that winemaker Callie Louw was leaving to set up his own project. This is the penultimate vintage that he’ll have seen into bottle – and what a vintage it is. Dry conditions made for a crop of small, concentrated berries, creating a powerful wine that is built to last. At first, the wine offers bright fruit, pepper spice, parma violets and rose pot-pourri, with raspberry and aniseed twists. The palate feels tight, packed with vibrant red fruit – linear and driven, yet concentrated. The tannins are seamless, chalky and fine, with a spicy lift to the finish. With air, the fruit shifts to darker tones, revealing mulberry and blackberry depths, a salty earthiness and crushed-rock minerality, while the tannins build to offer more grip. Long, concentrated and supremely balanced – this is a stunning Syrah deserving of every accolade. Made with 85% whole-bunch, the wine was aged for 12 months, 90% in foudre and the remaining 10% in concrete.
Critic scores
Average Score
Tim Atkin MW
James Suckling
More reviews and scores
Licorice, rosewater, iron, green peppercorns, Kalamata olives, cardamom, figs and mulberries on the nose. It’s medium-bodied, savory and deliciously peppery, with firm and tightly knit tannins. I like the salty, stemmy and dark spice undertones. Long and focused. Better from 2026.
The 2023 growing season was "dry and difficult", according to Callie Louw, at least in this wild and starkly beautiful corner of the Swartland, but you wouldn’t know it from the quality of this superlative Syrah. Picked late, right up to March 8th, it has the concentration and intensity of a small crop. Fermented with 90% whole clusters, with 70% of the wine using the submerged cap technique, it's one of the most sublime Porseleinbergs yet, pairing aromas of incense, thyme and black pepper with firm, age-worthy tannins, blackberry, red berry and liquorice flavours and a stony, mineral core. Truly world class.
About the producer
Porseleinberg is a single-site Syrah from the Swartland that has, since its first vintage in 2010, become one of South Africa’s most celebrated and sought-after wines. Made by cult winemaker Callie Louw from incredibly poor soils on the slopes of the Porseleinberg, the wine is rightfully revered.