Free Friday tasting - the elegance of Lismore Estate

Greyton is cool

It is a quiet area that nestles up in the foothills of Africa's most southerly mountain range with its vineyards around 300 metres up, where Samantha O'Keefe grows elegant wines that have almost no relationship with the preconception of what a new world - never mind a South African - wine tastes like. For instance her Syrah is not only northern Rhone-like; it reminds me more of Marc Sorrel than anyone else's Hermitage. The climate and altitude combine with her soils to make a terroir that O'Keefe brilliantly exploits to make wines that have juicy freshness and retraint above density and mass.