Tasting Notes
Matured in 3rd and 4th fill, French-oak barrels, this Chardonnay offers a pale-straw, golden colour with a hint of lime. Fresh and vibrant natural acidity, gives way to a well-rounded mid-palate. White-stone-fruit, flinty and mineral with a long, lingering, saliva-inducing, dry-as-a-bone finish. Superbly balanced, this wine will leave you mourning the final drops in the bottle.
The perfect match with any fish or poultry recipe. Cheese sauces, garlic-mushrooms or even spicy foods will be tamed by this refreshing wine. It has easily enough body and substance to stand up to most foods, while the back-bone of the wine brings structure to the elegant and graceful aromas and textures. Clean and fresh, this wine will leave you feeling as light as a feather.
Technical Analysis
Alcohol: 13% Residual Sugar: 1.06g/l Total Acidity: 5.5 g/l pH: 3.23 Production: 2,800 bottles (750ml)
Harvested: By hand 8th February 2020 Ageing potential: 8-10 years
Harvest Report
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 ripeness Vs phenolic ripeness of the skins).
Harvesting
The grapes were hand picked on the 8th February, during the early part of the morning, 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 10⁰C. Once this temperature was achieved, the grapes were sent along a sorting table, to remove anything that may have been missed by the vineyard pickers.
Vinification
From here, the grapes were crushed and sent directly into the press where the juice was separated immediately from the skins and sent to a settling tank. The following day, the clear juice was racked from the gross-lees into 300L, French oak barrels, where the juice was allowed to warm up slowly and a few days later, a spontaneous fermentation kicked in. A Natural Fermentation took about 40 days to complete, adding extra complexity, balance and texture to the final result. Natural Ferments are riskier but are equally more rewarding, …………………….providing everything goes to plan!?!