South African Wine and Amarula in Doraville

Our website records what people type into its search box. Most of it is what you would expect: tequila, bourbon, whatever was in the football advert. But there is a small, stubborn cluster that is not like the rest. People searching for Castle Lager. People searching simply for "South Africa". Not one or two, and not once - enough of them, month after month, that it is clearly a community rather than an accident.

So let us start with the honest part. We do not stock Castle Lager. Not today, not in the back, not under the counter. If you drove here for it you would leave disappointed, and we would rather tell you that on a webpage than at the register.

What we do have is a real South African wine shelf, and one of the best cream liqueurs made anywhere.

The wine

South African wine has an odd standing in the American market: people either know it very well or not at all. The bottles below are the ones that actually move here, which tells you that the people buying them know exactly what they came for.

What "natural sweet" actually means

If you did not grow up with South African labels, the phrase natural sweet on the Robertson bottles deserves an explanation, because it is a category rather than marketing language. It describes a wine finished with residual sugar and a low alcohol level, built to be served cold and drunk young rather than cellared. It is an everyday style in a great many South African homes, and it is nothing like a European dessert wine, which is concentrated, strong and poured in small glasses. These are the opposite: light, cold, easy, and priced to be opened on a Tuesday.

Mulderbosch is the outlier on this shelf. Stellenbosch is South Africa's most serious wine district, and a rosé pressed from Cabernet Sauvignon is a genuine winemaking decision rather than a colour choice. At $15.39 it is the bottle to take to somebody else's house.

Amarula

Amarula Cream Liqueur is $30.79 on our shelf. It is made from the fruit of the marula tree, which grows across sub-equatorial Africa. The spirit is distilled, aged two years in French oak, and only then blended with cream. That oak-ageing step before the dairy goes in is the reason it does not taste like the Irish bottle everyone compares it to. Over ice, after a meal, is how it is meant to be drunk.

Cooking over fire

If you are having a braai this weekend, the pairing is not complicated. The Jam Jar Shiraz chilled down is the bottle that belongs next to a fire and a plate of boerewors - the semi-sweet fruit handles smoke and spice in a way a dry red simply does not. The Robertson whites do the same job for anyone who does not want red in the heat.

About that Castle Lager

We can see the searches and we know what they mean. What we will not do is tell you a beer is on the shelf when it is not. If South African beer is what would bring you in, say so at the counter or on the phone. A shelf changes because somebody asks for something, and we would far rather hear it from you than guess at it from a search log.

Come get it

Beverage World Package Store, 6731 Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, Doraville, GA 30360. Call (770) 441-0001. We are open Sundays; current hours are on the location and hours page. Prices and stock in this post were correct the day it was written — the links go to the live product pages, which always win.