2024 Brookdale Mason Road Syrah South Africa 750 ml

Most South African Syrah announces itself with muscle. This one does the opposite. Brookdale's Mason Road Syrah is built on lift and perfume rather than sheer weight, a red-fruited, savory expression with more in common with the cooler corners of the northern Rhône than with the sun-baked Shiraz the Cape is often known for.

It comes from one of Paarl's more improbable success stories. When the Rudd family took over Brookdale in 2015, it was a neglected, overgrown farm at the foot of the Klein Drakenstein mountains. Most of the old vines were pulled and the land replanted, much of it to Mediterranean varieties still considered unusual in South Africa. A decade on, Brookdale is regarded as one of the country's most exciting young estates.

The farming is done with a light hand: regenerative and minimal-intervention, certified vegan and vegetarian, with alien vegetation cleared and indigenous species replanted to bring back the native fynbos that rings the vineyards. That restored wildness shows up in the wine's herbal, brambly edge.

The 2024 is the work of winemaker Kiara Scott Farmer, who crafted this vintage before being named South Africa's Diners Club Winemaker of the Year, the country's highest winemaking honour, awarded to a single winemaker nationwide each year. Born on the Cape Flats and trained at Elsenburg and Stellenbosch, she built her name on precision and restraint, and both are stamped on this bottle.

Mason Road is Brookdale's everyday range, but the winemaking is anything but casual. The Syrah ferments with a small portion of whole clusters in open-top tanks on wild yeast. In a clever twist, the destemmed stalks are dried in the hot Paarl sun for a couple of days, then returned to the ferment, lending savory, peppery depth without any green, stemmy bite. Malolactic fermentation finishes in barrel and foudre, rounding the texture while keeping things fresh.

The fruit grows on decomposed-granite soils in the Klein Drakenstein foothills, near the Du Toitskloof Pass. The 2024 season tested everyone in Paarl: a wet, cold, flood-stricken winter and spring gave way to a dry, windy summer and a hot January that pulled harvest forward and trimmed yields. Smaller crops meant more concentrated fruit, carried here in a frame that stays bright and light on its feet.