Luke O’Cuinneagain

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207 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 31 Jul

Luke O’Cuinneagain’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The Drinking Hour: With David Kermode - FoodFM · Episode 277 - Luke O’Cuinneagain of Vergelegen · 31 Jul 2026 podcast

And what I also find funny about blending is when you taste all your wines as individuals, you'll say, oh, let's say that's a...

a three star there that's only one star there and you naturally gravitate and go ah we need all the three stars together to get the best blend but it doesn't work like that sometimes you might have two fantastic wines but you put them together they just don't gel but you need a little bit of let's say press wine which you haven't rated that you put in and that ties them together makes them work so that's the

It's a hundred percent right.

I mean a few years ago I remember we had spent a whole day trying to work on one blend and I left it and walked away because we were just getting nowhere and we were going backwards and then the irony of the whole thing

i came back two days later and drew the samples again we started and within about five minutes of starting we hit the nail on the head and was done and you go well what was happening two days ago so it is something that you have to you have you can't have preconceived ideas you have to go in with the blank slate and just start to build from the side because

what makes wine so exciting as well is that we're working with the elements and every year it's different and you want that expression to come through and you want to see why this vintage was like that and another one was like this

You do want the broad brushstrokes to come through, but you have to have that individual characteristic.

Because I think it's fantastic for me, if I open a bottle of wine, I often view it as like a little time capsule, because you have captured that moment in time of both the geology and geography of that wine.

And once you open it, you can go back and...

And you can almost be like a detective by tasting and going, oh, I can see they must have had a rainier year or must be very hot because of these characteristics, which make it super exciting.

And it's a product that's not sterile.

And that's what I love about it.

applies whatever the price it's about bang for your buck what are your sort of thoughts at the moment on where South African wines are well I think South Africa as a category is such an exciting category because due to our climate and everything we can grow a plethora of things here and they grow well and we

narrowing it down to sites that are doing really well for some things and there and i also think we have got this um uh confidence in our wire making that we put our own stamp on it we're not trying to do uh uh

We're not trying to mimic, let's say, Bordeaux.

It's our South African take on it.

And I think this newfound confidence coming through in the wines is making them a lot more dynamic.

And they are offering a lot.

And I think a lot of people underestimate how South African wines age, because they do age fabulously well, though.

The reason why people don't see it is that there's not a lot of old stuff that people used to hold back because it was always the thought was very much you sell out everything because we're running a business here and it wasn't looking to the future and things like that.

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