Pinotage

In the Cellar

A new release of a favourite of our estate and a wine we make since our first harvest in 1997. Vintage 2017 was just fantastic, perfect growing conditions with moderate temperatures, combined with enough moisture produced small concentrated berries. This wine is a stunner. This is as typical as full bodied real Pinotage gets in the Simonsberg – Stellenbosch appellation. We have only one block of Pinotage on the farm. It is a block that is 17 years old, bush vine and that gets no irrigation. This is ideal for this grape because the lower the yield the better the wine. We usually start hand picking the first week of February. Pinotage is by far the earliest red grape in South – Africa. We destem, sort manually and then crash before the mash is moved softly by peristaltic pump to 5 ton open top fermentation tanks. Selected yeast is added and we chill the grapes down for 24 hours. Not cold soak but we do not want the fermentation to start to quickly. The grape is, like one of its parents Pinot Noir, extremely fast with fermentation and we try to avoid this to give us more time for manual punches. Yes, we still do everything manually and punch the cap every 2 hours for the first 36 hours. Total skin contact before pressing is usually around 4 days. This is rather quick but we do not want to extract too much of the tannin towards the end of the fermentation when the alcohol plays a huge part in softening it. After pressing we add all the press juice and inoculate with a selected malolactic bacteria. After MLF we rack and add a lot of sulphur before filling the wine to French oak barrels for 12 months. We do maximum 30 % new but will even go lower than that in future to really express the fruit of this native grape more. The wine is sterile bottled.