There are certain wine phrases I have vowed never to use. Optimal ripeness is one (honestly, when else would you pick a grape?), time capsule is another (woof). But the ultimate kicker? Sense of place. I’d have a mountain of nickels for that one. And then a wine comes along that wants to make you eat your words and recover from the indigestion on your nickel mountain.
Illimis doesn’t just give a sense of place, it crowbars the window of your inner soul’s eye to teleport you straight into the vineyard. “I want people to taste the complexity that actually comes from the vineyards,” says winemaker Lucinda Heyns. These aren’t big, bombastic wines that grab you by the nose hairs with a suckerpunch of flavour. No, Illimis focuses on light reds that subtly command your attention. They’re crunchy, light-footed and lean (but in that muscular panther way, not in that insipid he-always-skips-leg-day kinda way).
The Illimis Cinsault is sourced from a vineyard in Darling planted in the early ‘70s. “For me, it's just magic to think how wine transcends generations and time,” says Lucinda. “I'm working with fruit from a vineyard that was planted before I was born.” The morning heat gives this Cinsault its redcurrant brightness, while the cool nights imbue savoury nuances, and the low yields of the old vines wrap everything up in a flavour concentration bow. It’s a wine that holds its depth with an effortlessness.
And the Illimis Pinotage? Well, it’s the modern, suave Pinotage all the other overoaked Pinotages on the shelf wish they could be. It’s the sort of wine that knows what’s cool even before it’s cool, which is probably why it’s aptly from Polkadraai Hills, once known as the arse of Stellenbosch, while today boasting some of the region’s highest scoring and exciting wines. “If you stand in the vineyard, you see the whole of False Bay all the way from Cape Point to Rooi-Els,” enthuses Lucinda on the goosebump-inducing origins of the wine. Bright, perfumed and luscious, it balloons in richness, revealing an earthy core with fine, chalky tannins with an ease that belies its complexity.
Illimis means clarity in Latin, and boy, tonight’s wine choice could not be clearer.