Wines from the 'Rainbow Nation'

It's no secret that South African producers have taken Chenin Blanc to another level

Sounds beguiling, and one immediately gets interested in wines from a place with such an interesting name.

The ‘Rainbow Nation’ is, of course, South Africa, the country at the southern tip of Africa, where wines have been produced for some 360 years, ever since the establishment of Cape Town by the Dutch in 1652. The British colonised the country in 1795, and it got independence as the Republic of South Africa (its official name) only in 1931. Mahatma Gandhi cut his political teeth there (1893-1914); sometimes one forgets that apartheid was in force here till 1990, and it is only thereafter