There are 640 bottles of TR3S in the world. Each one is numbered by hand, and each one holds three years. 

That is the short version. The longer one begins with a question Johann Fourie has been circling for most of a decade: what would Benguela Cove Chardonnay taste like if you did not have to choose a year? 

The problem with a single harvest 

Almost every bottle of wine in your house carries one year on the label. We treat it as a fact about the wine, and to a point it is — it tells you what the weather did, which tells you something about what is in the glass. 

It is also a boundary. Whatever that season handed the winemaker is what they had to work with, and nothing done in the cellar afterwards can add a summer that did not happen. Young Chardonnay comes out bright, fresh and a little obvious. Give it years and it turns complex, savoury and a little tired. Most of us drink the first while quietly wishing for the second. 

TR3S was built to stop choosing. It draws on three Benguela Cove Chardonnay harvests — 2023, 2024 and 2025 — blended into one wine, with no vintage on the label at all. 

“TR3S is Benguela Cove’s meditation on time. It is not tied to one harvest, but to an idea: that Chardonnay, when given patience and precision, can reveal far more than a single moment ever could.” 

Johann calls the result a 360-degree view: the variety seen from every angle at once, rather than through the narrow window of a single season. 

Why this estate can do it 

The idea only works if the wine ages, and that is not a given. Most South African whites are made to be drunk inside two years, and they behave accordingly. 

Benguela Cove sits on the Walker Bay coast, inside the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve, with the Atlantic on one side and open water on the other. Cool air moves between them all afternoon, which slows ripening and keeps acid in the fruit long after warmer sites have lost it. The Chardonnay comes off adjacent west-facing slopes on weathered shale, high in calcium — the kind of soil that holds a wine’s spine together. 

That acidity is the whole reason TR3S exists. A 2023 component still had enough life in it three years on to lift a blend rather than drag it down, which is a quiet proof of what this site does. Take the acid away and there would be nothing worth blending. 

The Only Multi-Vintage Chardonnay in Winemag’s Top 10 

Before its official release, TR3S had already attracted national attention. The wine was named among Winemag's Top 10 Chardonnays of 2026, earning 94 points in the Prescient Fund Services Chardonnay Report. More strikingly, it stood alone as the only multi-vintage wine on the list, a quiet endorsement of the idea at the heart of TR3S: that three harvests, thoughtfully blended, can say more than one ever could. 

Three harvests, three jobs 

The 2025 forms half the blend and does the obvious work — fruit, freshness, drive. The 2024 sits underneath at 35% and holds the shape. The 2023 makes up the final 15%: the smallest component and by some distance the most noticeable, because three years in barrel have taken it somewhere nutty and slow, and it pulls the other two along behind it. 

Getting that balance right is the difficult part, and Johann is precise about what he was after. 

“Each vintage contributes its own voice, yet none dominates. Instead, they speak together, creating harmony rather than contrast.” 

Borrowed from people who have done it for centuries 

Blending across years is not new — it is simply not done with still Chardonnay. Champagne houses hold back reserve wine from earlier harvests, which is why a non-vintage Brut tastes like itself decade after decade. Tawny port blends across decades openly. A solera, the system that made sherry famous, tops older barrels up with younger wine year after year until every bottle carries a trace of every harvest before it. 

Johann took that thinking and pointed it at a still white. As far as we can establish, no other South African estate has done so. 

What it is actually like 

It opens conventionally: lemon, white peach, grapefruit, melon, nectarine. Leave it ten minutes and the second layer arrives — roasted hazelnut, brioche, oyster shell, nougat, cashew, with a trace of spice and lanolin underneath that tells you time has been spent somewhere. 

The oak has vanished. The wine sat in French 300-litre barrels across all three vintages and you would struggle to find a stave of it. What remains is texture rather than flavour — beautifully invisible, as the fact sheet has it. 

The palate is concentrated and, for want of a better word, quiet. It carries weight without heaviness, and the finish runs on longer than the first sip leads you to expect. The drinking window is 2027 to 2031, though the older components mean it is good company now. 

And the name 

Tres is Spanish for three, which is the number of harvests. Très is French for “very”, the word you reach for when something needs emphasis. Both readings are deliberate. The 3 standing in for the e was, by Johann’s account, a matter of being a bit creative — fair enough, given what is in the bottle. 

640 bottles 

That is the entire production, worldwide. TR3S is released on allocation rather than sold from the shop: wine club members are offered theirs first, then a small volume goes to selected trade, at R670 a bottle. Three bottles per person, so that 640 reaches as many cellars as possible. 

This blend will not be made again. The parcels that went into it are finished. 

The details, for those who want them 

13.5% alcohol · pH 3.38 · TA 6.4 g/l · RS 3.3 g/l · French 300-litre barrels across three vintages · drink 2027–2031 · Wine of Origin Walker Bay · 100% estate grown · clones CY277 and CY96 on adjacent west-facing slopes of weathered shale, high in calcium. 

Questions 

Is a multi-vintage wine the same as a non-vintage wine? 

Not quite. Non-vintage usually means a wine blended for consistency year after year — a house style, most familiar from Champagne. A multi-vintage wine blends named harvests for a deliberate effect. TR3S is the second kind: 2023, 2024 and 2025, in stated proportions, each doing a different job. 

Why is there no year on the label? 

Because there are three. A stated vintage has to come from a single harvest, so a wine drawn from three carries none. The proportions are on the fact sheet instead. 

When should I open it? 

Between 2027 and 2031. It drinks well now — the older components see to that — but the middle of that window is where it should be most interesting. 

What should I serve with it? 

Something with substance. It has the weight for richer dishes and enough acidity to cut back through them. 

How do I get hold of one? 

ADD TO CART

Taste it 

Wine sales: 087 357 0637. Or visit the tasting room at Benguela Cove Lagoon Wine Estate, Bot River, Hermanus.