Tasting Notes
Fresh, clean and vibrant, with beautiful, floral notes of elderflower and white peach on the nose and palate. Hints of asparagus and mown grass. As elegant wine with a fine structure, crisp, mouth-watering finish this is akin to a European, cooler-climate style Sauvignon Blanc.
This wine will pair easily with all sea-food dishes, crudité’s and cuts through rich pate’s like a hot knife through butter. Truly refreshing, this wine can even drunk unaccompanied, as a medium-bodied aperitif.
Technical Analysis
Alcohol: 13% Residual Sugar: 1.70g/l Total Acidity: 5.9 g/l pH: 3.22 Production: 3,200 bottles (750ml)
Harvested: By hand 25th February 2020 Ageing potential: 5-7 years
Harvest Report
The harvest started slightly later than the previous vintage, with the Syrah ripening before the Sauvignon Blanc this year! Processing the grapes and fermentations were more spread out and therefore, more manageable than the previous vintage.
Following 4 years of drought conditions in The Western Cape, the 2019/20 growing season saw rainfall return to average levels, nicely spread, throughout the season and even into harvest-time. Budding was even and flowering missed much of the earlier rain, though did result in a bit of millerandages and coulure, resulting in looser bunches, less and smaller berries. 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
As is common practice for Seven Springs the grapes were picked by hand, early in the morning, this year it was on 25th February. The bunches were picked and sorted for the first time in the vineyard, with unripe, rotten or bird-damaged fruit discarded and dropped to the ground. The bunches were then placed into picking crates (each crates weighing up to 20Kgs when full), and transported to the cellar, just 1km away, to be unloaded straight into the cold room to chill down to about 12⁰C. This prevents the fruit from ripening further and allows it to rest prior to the second sorting the next morning after which vinification began.
Vinification
From here, the grapes were de-stemmed, crushed and sent directly into the press where they had just short of an hours’ skin-contact. From here, the juice was separated from the skins and sent 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 and a few days later, a spontaneous fermentation kicked in. Fermentation took about 14 days to be completed with the wine being inoculated with yeast during the final process.