£9.29
£12.39 per litre · incl. 20% VAT
Out of Stock
Soft, juicy and easy to love, this is Merlot the way it should be at midweek prices: ripe red berries, a whisper of spice, and a rounded finish that gets on with almost any dinner you put in front of it. A reliable Cape red for Tuesday nights, Sunday roasts and everything in between.
Not for sale to persons under 18. Adult signature required on delivery.
We keep Cape Heights on the list because it earns its place every single time. Boutinot have been quietly making some of the Cape's most food-friendly wines since 1994, and this Merlot is their everyday range doing exactly what it should: ripe, rounded, gently spicy, and priced so you don't have to think twice about opening a second bottle. It's not trying to be a Stellenbosch showpiece. It's the reliable midweek red every wine rack needs, and the one we recommend to anyone starting their South African journey.
Bright, ripe red berries lead the nose: raspberry and cherry with a soft lift of hedgerow fruit. The palate is rounded and juicy, plum and mulberry filling the middle with a gentle spice curling through. Modest oak (just 10%) keeps things fresh rather than heavy, and the tannins are soft enough to make this genuinely easy drinking. The finish is clean and lightly peppery, leaving you ready for another sip.
Some wines are built for showing off. This isn't one of them, and that's precisely why we love it. Cape Heights Merlot is the bottle you reach for when you want something warm, generous and completely unfussy. The kind of red that makes a weeknight pasta feel like a proper occasion. The fruit comes from long-established vineyards straddling the Swartland and Wellington borders, with a hand from the warmer Breede River Valley inland. Decomposed granite soils, low rainfall and low-trellised vines do the hard work in the vineyard, giving fruit that's ripe, even and just a little bit wild around the edges. Expect a nose of bright red berries, then a rounded palate of plum and hedgerow fruit with a gentle spicy lift on the finish. The winemaking is deliberately soft. Open-top fermenters, pigeage by hand, malolactic fermentation and a spell on the lees for texture, with just 10% oak for a touch of polish. Nothing overworked. Just supple, honest Merlot doing what it does best. Pour it with grilled lamb, a tomato-rich pasta, chorizo and butterbean stew, or spicy sausages and mash. Delivered to your door anywhere in the UK, this is the sort of bottle worth keeping in the rack for whenever the week needs rescuing.
This is a proper midweek red, built for uncomplicated, comforting food. Think grilled lamb chops with a smear of mustard, a big bowl of spaghetti in a slow-cooked tomato and garlic sauce, or a chorizo and butterbean stew on a cold Sunday. Bangers and mash with rich onion gravy work brilliantly too. Nothing too refined; just honest cooking that matches the wine's easygoing spirit.
No need to decant. A quick swirl in the glass is plenty to wake up the red berry and plum aromatics. If anything, over-aeration will flatten the juicy freshness that makes this wine tick.
Made for drinking now rather than cellaring. The soft tannins, modest oak and juicy fruit profile point squarely at everyday enjoyment. Open a bottle within a year or two of buying to catch the fruit at its brightest; there is no benefit to holding onto it.
Long-established vineyards on the Swartland/Wellington borders and in the Breede River Valley sit on mainly decomposed-granite soils. The vines are trained low, close to the warm ground, soaking up the heat of long, dry summers. That combination of granite, low rainfall and low trellising is what gives the fruit its ripe depth and a savoury edge underneath the plum.
Softly does it. The grapes go into open-top fermenters and get gentle pigeage four times a day early on, easing to twice daily as fermentation winds down. It's a delicate way to coax colour and flavour out of the skins without stripping the fruit of its charm. Malolactic follows, then a stretch on the lees builds depth and rounds off the tannins. Just 10% of the wine sees oak, enough to add a whisper of polish without ever muscling in on the ripe berry fruit.
Le Domaine draws its fruit from vineyards scattered across the Western Cape, from coastal sites cooled by Atlantic breezes to warmer inland slopes, all planted between 50 and 300 metres above sea level. This broad sourcing is deliberate. By blending components from different microclimates, the cellar builds a consistent house style that balances the crisp acidity of cooler sites with the ripe generosity of warmer ones. It's the Western Cape's extraordinary diversity captured in a single glass.
Boutinot
Paul Boutinot spent years searching the world for a site that could make wine on his terms. He found it on the Schapenberg, a windswept ridge above Somerset West looking out over False Bay and the Atlantic. From day one Waterkloof was farmed organically, with biodynamic conversion following soon after. Cattle, sheep and goats roam the estate producing compost and grazing cover crops, and draught horses do the work tractors usually do, keeping the soil loose and alive. Cellarmaster Nadia Barnard, who joined at the very beginning and now runs the cellar, takes those naturally balanced grapes and gives them as little intervention as possible. It's farming as philosophy, and you can taste it.
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