The League Takes Shape: SAWOL Round 2 Recap

Round 2 of the South Australian Wine Options League (SAWOL) landed at Septimus on the first Monday of March, and it delivered. A field of eleven faced another six-wine blind flight, with new faces joining returning competitors hungry to improve on their Round 1 positions.

For those new to SAWOL or wanting a refresher on the scoring system:

SAWOL Rules & Regulations

The Flight in Review

Round 2 raised the bar with a flight that rewarded technical depth and punished assumptions. The opening wine — a Bleasdale Sparkling Shiraz from Langhorne Creek — was a deliberate curveball. Most competitors found the Shiraz, but the region split the room: Barossa Valley was the dominant wrong answer, with only a handful landing Langhorne Creek.

Wine 2, the La Crema Chardonnay from Monterey, was the toughest wine of the night. The richer, new-world oak profile sent most competitors toward Chenin Blanc or Semillon — almost nobody called Chardonnay, and Monterey was effectively unidentified across the room. Alfred Yapp was the lone competitor to nail the variety, underlining just how disorienting a well-made Californian Chardonnay can be in a blind context.

Wine 3, a 2023 Riesling from the Rheingau, provided a moment of collective relief. Variety identification was near-universal, and several competitors also correctly placed it in Germany — making it the highest-scoring wine of the night across the field.

The red flight was where the competition fractured. Wine 4 — a 2013 Coonawarra Shiraz — had most competitors reaching for Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec. The leaner, more structured profile of older Coonawarra Shiraz proved deceptive, and only a small number found both the variety and the region. Wine 5, a 2023 Pinotage from Stellenbosch, was the night’s great separator. Pinot Noir, Malbec, and Tempranillo all appeared on scorecards — Pinotage was a genuinely rare call, and Alfred Yapp’s perfect 10 here was the decisive factor in his win.

The flight closed with a Rutherglen-style Muscat — technically labelled South East Australia — which most competitors identified by variety but lost points on region, defaulting to Rutherglen rather than the broader GI. Amy Leask was among the very few to correctly identify South East Australia, picking up a perfect 10 on the final wine and vaulting up the leaderboard.

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Community and Competition

A special thanks to Gracie Douglas, our in-house winemaker, who ran Round 2 with real expertise and generosity. Gracie’s tasting notes and discussion points after the reveal were exactly what this competition is designed to foster — the Bleasdale solera history, the Rheingau terroir discussion, the Pinotage debate. It was a masterclass wrapped inside a competition.

After the scores were in, the room stayed to re-taste and debrief. The Pinotage and the Californian Chardonnay drew the most discussion — two wines that exposed genuine gaps in even experienced palates. This is the point of SAWOL: the competition is the vehicle, but the learning and the conversation are the destination.

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The Round 2 Flight

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Round 2 Results

A strong performance from Alfred Yapp takes the Round 2 win and vaults him to the top of the cumulative standings.

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Cumulative Standings

Competitors who sat out a round are shown with their available round score only. The league is open — new entrants may join at any round.