In one of those apocryphal anecdotes you wish were true a Mercedes-Benz and a Jaguar engineer are discussing their respective quality control tests.
The Merc man says that they take a car randomly off the assembly line and lock up a cat inside it overnight. If the next morning the cat has succumbed from oxygen deprivation, the car is good to go. The Jag man says they have the same test but the car passes as long as the cat’s still there in the morning.
At its most elementary level this story juxtaposes the popular caricatures of British and German engineering. What it doesn’t convey is that Jag loyalists buy their marque of choice despite the possibility that the car they love might be mechanically less perfect.
Perhaps they would like it to be engineered like a Swiss watch, but that’s not what draws them to the brand. For them there’s an emotional engagement that transcends the technical.
This same dichotomy exists in the world of wine. There are some producers whose wines are hyper-expressive, exuberant, not always perfect, perhaps even a little rustic. Those who buy their latest releases with almost religious fervour don’t seem to mind the lack of polish. You could even argue that they prefer them unschooled, slow to settle down in the bottle, unpredictable when opened and decanted, in short, a little temperamental, a little rebellious.
Jean Smit’s Damascene wines are not like this. His focus is technical perfection, purity, the best possible expression of place unmediated by winemaking intervention.
This does not mean that he seeks to remove the winemaker from the winemaking. On the contrary, you cannot make wines where the scaffolding is invisible unless every aspect of the process has been mapped and managed to the infinitesimal. Nothing is left to chance.
Damascene burst onto the Cape wine scene with the 2019 vintage. David and Genevieve Curl, who had owned Chateau Gaby in Canon-Fronsac Bordeaux, acquired a small apple farm in Elgin, which they called Moya Meaker in honour of Genevieve’s late mother. Smit, formerly senior winemaker at Boekenhoutskloof, connected with David Curl, and together they mapped out a vision for the Damascene brand.
Smit’s focus is single-site expressions of the Cape’s most successful varieties. Curl has created an extraordinary winery so Smit can craft the most precise rendition of cultivar relative to its origin.
There are now 12 such wines in the range, a few of which are blends of more than one parcel. Three come from the Curls’ Moya Meaker farm, a pinot, a chardonnay and a riesling. The remaining wines are sourced from vineyards spread across vast expanses of the Cape – from the Cederberg and the Ceres Plateau, through the Swartland, Stellenbosch and Franschhoek.
The latest releases (mainly 2025 except for the cabernets) are exactly what you would expect from Smit in one of the best vintages in recent memory in the Cape. All show great purity, none make any concessions to early drinkability. They are like tightly wound springs straining against the constraints of time.
The Moyo Meaker wines are perhaps the most accessible, the pinot, perhaps, ahead of the chardonnay. It has burgundian aromatics, a whiff of dark cherry compote, succulence rather than opulence. The chardonnay is chablis-like, limey and tight, with the youth of the vines still evident.
Of the other wines, the curiously named “Electric Mud” — grenache noir from a Piekenierskloof vineyard planted in 1966 — is the standout new release: jellied redcurrants with hints of fresh prune plums.
Other wines well worth buying — and keeping — include the Swartland and Stellenbosch Syrahs, the Stellenbosch and Swartland chenins, the 2024 Stellenbosch cabernet and the Elgin (Moyo Meaker) riesling, linear, a little austere, but not elusive.
There are no mediocre wines from Damascene. They are all superbly crafted — though perhaps a little restrained in their youth. But this is hardly a defect. They’re not made for wine drinkers in a hurry or for consumers willing to trade perfection for flamboyance.
Standard Bank WineX takes place at the Sandton Convention Centre on October 28-30, 5pm – 9pm. Tickets through Webtickets. Business Day readers qualify for a Friends of Winex discount for Thursday October 29 using the code: SBWX26FOW
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Dining and Cooking