“This is, quite frankly, outstanding. I fell in love. Watch these guys like a hawk. My hand hovered over 18... “ - Tamlyn Currin for JancisRobinson.com, 17.5 points

“A thoroughly exhilarating expression of cool climate Chardonnay and definitely a new release not to be missed!” - Greg Sherwood MW, 96 points

This maiden release from Draaiboek (Afrikaans for ‘dry retch’) is a Puligny-bashing masterpiece! [One bit of that sentence was untrue]. We always write our own notes after tasting a wine, but I have to accept, with atypical humility, that I can’t improve on the quality of the descriptions below by Greg Sherwood and Tamlyn Currin, two of the finest wine writers in the UK. I might have used some of the same flavour comparisons (lime blossom, lemon peel, Granny Smith apples, dusty limestone, lemon grass and white stone fruits), but I’d be hard-pressed to come up with such evocative lines as “sage leaves, their oils and tiny velvet hairs and resin-sticky sap and tongue-twisting bitters” or “white pepper, fine-ground, floating in air like dust motes, like quarry dust and chalk” or “beautiful white citrus zest and liquid minerality that bristles on the taut palate”. So I won’t. 13.5% alc. Drink now-2032.

Press reviews:

JancisRobinson (Tamlyn Currin): “This is, quite frankly, outstanding. There is so much guttural grip and scrape and timbre to the wine that it feels like what it tastes like: sage leaves (their oils and tiny velvet hairs and resin-sticky sap and tongue-twisting bitters); pineapple skin (rugged, sweet, chewy, things you want to spit and things that bite and acid that spite spikes your tongue and then sweetness, again); white pepper (fine-ground, floating in air like dust motes, like quarry dust and chalk catching the back of your throat); chalk (like licking a saliva-punctuated-pauses piece of white scrawl that ever so slightly screeches curves across your tongue). It's like the Sylvia Plath of Chardonnay. Reader: I fell in love. Watch these guys like a hawk. My hand hovered over 18... (Brilliant labels, by the way.) GV. Drink now-2035.“ 17.5 points

 Greg Sherwood MW: “This fantastic maiden release wine from Draaiboek Wines draws on the very finest elements of the cool climate terroir of Elgin to create a wine from a dry-farmed eight-year-old single vineyard situated on south westerly facing slopes, 255 metres above the coast. Fermented in French oak using 25% new barrels, the wine was aged for 10 months on its fine lees before being bottled unfiltered and unfined. The Kinkel shows a slightly tighter, more restrained aromatic profile on the nose, with subtle hints of lime blossom, lemon peel, Granny Smith apples, dusty limestone, lemon grass and white stone fruits. For all its reserve and wound spring tension, you can sense the electricity pulsing below the surface, waiting to explode on the racy, energetic, saline palate that shows subtle hints of flinty reduction. Once again, like its sibling Onskuld, the oaking is extremely elegant, pinpoint and precise, in no way obscuring the beautiful white citrus zest and liquid minerality that bristles on the taut palate. Seamless, crystalline and delightfully focused, this is a thoroughly exhilarating expression of cool climate Chardonnay and definitely a new release not to be missed! Drink from 2024 to 2034+.” 96 points