Tasting Notes

Deep, Pomegranate-Pink colour, with a hint of raspberries on the nose. Water melon fruit flavours initially set the tone, backed up with a medium-bodied, textured mid-palate. This eventually gives way to a bone-dry, long, lingering finish with an uplifting freshness at the end. Mouthwatering!

This wine will pair easily with smoked fish, charcuterie, biltong and the like. The mid-palate certainly has more weight than many other rose’s but that is what makes this such an awesome braai wine. Something to wash away the dust and the heat of the early afternoon! Also great with scrambled eggs and bacon, for those who cannot wait for lunchtime, to get stuck in!!

Technical Analysis

Alcohol: 13.50% Residual Sugar: 1.54g/l Total Acidity: 6.2 g/l pH: 3.41
Harvested: By hand 21st February 2019 Bottled: July 2019 Production: 3,000 bottles (750ml)

Harvest Report and Vinification

The 2019 wine-making campaign resulted in excellent quality grapes being delivered to the cellar, but not all was plain-sailing!

The harvest started slightly later than the previous vintage, though finished earlier! As a result, a number of the different varieties ripened at around the same time, meaning processing everything within a shorter period of time, was quite challenging.

Following 3 years of drought conditions in The Western Cape, the 2018/19 growing season saw rainfall return to average levels, with a cool, wet spring, followed by a windy, warm summer though no real heat-waves to speak of. Budding and flowering were a little uneven across the board, which resulted in quite a bit of crop-dropping around Christmas time, during Veraison (when the grapes change colour from green to yellow or red – depending on the varietal). Summer evening temperatures remained much cooler than during the day, so ripening became more even and gradual, resulting in really well-balanced grapes (sugar content Vs phenolic ripeness).

The grapes were picked on the 21st February, late in the afternoon, with the first selection of bunches being conducted in the vineyards (any unripe, rotten or bird-damaged bunches were cut and dropped on the floor). Once the 20kg picking cases reached the cellar (1km away) they were loaded directly into the cooling room and brought down to about 12⁰C. The grapes were then sent along a sorting table, to remove anything that may have been missed by the vineyard pickers.

From here, the grapes were crushed and sent directly into the press where the juice was allowed to stay in contact with the skins (in the closed press) until we obtained the ideal depth of colour. Once happy with the colour, the grapes were pressed and the juice was pumped to a settling tank. The following day, the clear juice was racked from the gross-lees into another stainless-steel tank, where the juice was allowed to warm up slowly. A few days later, a spontaneous fermentation kicked in. Fermentation took about 21 days to be completed with the wine being inoculated with yeast towards the end of the process, just to finish off any residual Fructose.

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