There are certain wines that seem to take you somewhere.
For Tamlyn Currin of Jancis Robinson MW, two of Hazendal’s 2025 whites did exactly that. The Chenin Blanc and White Blend have just received an outstanding 18 and 17.5/20, with Currin’s evocative tasting notes describing wines that seem to capture not only their flavours, but the landscapes from which they come.
It is another striking endorsement of Hazendal Cellarmaster Kiara Scott-Farmer, whose distinctive approach to the Bottelary Hills is increasingly putting her wines among the Cape’s most compelling.
And these latest scores build on the already impressive assessments from Greg Sherwood MW, who awarded the 2025 Chenin Blanc 96/100 and the White Blend 94+/100.
Taken together, the reviews tell a remarkably consistent story: wines of texture, complexity and place, made with a lightness of touch that allows the vineyard to speak.
We thought they deserved a moment in the spotlight.
100% Chenin Blanc, Bottelary Hills
18 Points – Jancis Robinson MW | 96 Points – Greg Sherwood MW
“Winemaker Kiara Scott-Farmer’s distinctive hand is evident – she has a Turner-like ability to take the landscape in front of her and reveal it to us bathed in light, radiating with movement and yet holding stillness at the core. Her wines have a way of taking us right to the vineyard. In this golden wine that sings of sunlight, quince and kumquat, I can taste the stones and the shadows. I can taste the minty sweetness of helichrysum and the honeyed scent of dried flowers drifting across a dusty wind. In her wines, Kiara sifts stories through places, weaves flavour from time, and always leaves her fingerprint of joy.”- Tamlyn Currin.
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54% Roussanne, 46% Marsanne, Bottelary Hills
17.5 Points – Jancis Robinson MW | 94+ Points – Greg Sherwood MW
“It smells of honey, but not quite. Like mandarin peel, finely chopped, with the pith, dried a little, gently pestled in a stone mortar with ylang ylang flowers. There is a beautiful bronze-gong tang on the nose, which makes me wonder if Kiara is using very little sulphites in the winemaking – not a ‘natural wine’ tang, but a piquancy, and you can feel it even more on the palate. This wine is quite magical, and tasting it is a bit like walking into a secret garden. The sun bakes the high brick walls and you can smell the earth and stone and dust. Frangipani flowers underfoot like silky stars turning the path woozy with their heady fragrance. Citrus globes hang like jewels through deep green leaves, yellow, green, orange, gold, and you can taste their sweet and sour, their bitter and oil. Tiny mossy leaves of Corsican mint spill out of cracks and fill the air with cool freshness. Stunning complexity. Stunning grace. Spend quiet time with this wine. It deserves it.” – Tamlyn Currin.
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The Hand Behind the Wines
There is a sense of place in Kiara Scott-Farmer’s wines that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
At Hazendal, she seems less interested in imposing a style on the vineyard than in revealing what is already there. Her Chenin speaks of the Bottelary Hills through texture, salinity and light; the White Blend takes Roussanne and Marsanne from a tiny, weathered-granite site and turns them into something altogether more evocative.
It is perhaps this quality that Tamlyn Currin has recognised so clearly. Her descriptions of Kiara’s wines repeatedly return to landscape, light, movement and stillness, and ultimately to the winemaker herself, describing a distinctive hand and a “fingerprint of joy”.
That fingerprint is becoming unmistakable.
With Greg Sherwood MW calling her Chenin a wine that cements her place at the top table of Cape Chenin producers, and Currin awarding these 2025 wines 18 and 17.5/20, Kiara’s reputation is now being built not simply on what she makes, but on the unmistakable way in which she makes it.
