A recent email from the marketing body for all South African wines in the U.S. sparked my curiosity, and I decided to do a little research into the South African wine industry. After all, Pinotage is one of my favorite wines. In my research, ‘Steen’ continued popping up and I wondered how many people actually knew what it meant.

Steen is a white wine grape variety originally from the Loire valley of France and is the most widely planted variety in South Africa. You may know it as Chenin Blanc.

It’s high acidity means it can be used to make everything from sparkling wines to well-balanced dessert wines.

When drinking Chenin Blanc or Steen, one should expect a fresh fruit and delicate floral aroma with a mass of fruit flavors including pineapple, guava, melon, apricot or apple.

South Africa’s wine history dates back to 1655 when the Dutch planted the first vineyards just outside of Cape Town. Since then, wine style has evolved to combine the best of the old and new; bright, new world fruit is often blended with fruit from 40-year-old bush vines.

The end of apartheid allowed winemakers to travel the world and learn modern winemaking techniques and with their new skills, winemakers have begun to craft a national identity with an emphasis on terroir-driven wines. Today South Africa is the eighth largest producer of wine globally while containing only 1.5 percent of the world’s vineyards.

And as the South African wine industry flourishes, an unexpected consumer has found the vineyards an easy target for a tasty treat; often getting drunk on the fallen fruit fermented in the sun. Baboons are found in most parts of South Africa and now some winemakers are using the assistance of baboons in identifying better grapes. Baboons tend to select grapes at optimum ripeness with an uncanny ability to detect the correct degree of skin or pip greenness. They also steer away from grapes grown on vines infected with leaf-roll virus or those growing on blocks that had unbalanced acid and pH levels due to over-cropping.

One to try:

Beau Joubert Old Vine Chenin Blanc 2013 (Stellenbosch) This lightly wooded Steen spent three months in European oak barrels and offers zesty citrus and vivacious tropical flavors combined with a soft, subtle and creamy oak spice. – Less than $20