Tasting Notes
Pomegranate-pink colour, with a hint of Turkish-delight on the nose. Water melon and raspberry fruit flavours initially set the tone, backed up with a medium-bodied, textured mid-palate. This eventually gives way to a dry-as-a-bone, long, lingering finish with an uplifting freshness at the end.
This wine will pair easily with summer salads, sushi, charcuterie and even biltong. The mid-palate certainly has more depth 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 (or for brunch if in a hurry)!!
Technical Analysis
Alcohol: 13.00% Residual Sugar: 1.0g/l Total Acidity: 5.6g/l pH: 3.43
Harvested: By hand 9th March 2021 Bottled: 2nd August 2021 Production: 3,300 bottles (750ml)
The 2022 wine-making campaign kicked off with pruning only starting in the middle of August, until the second week of September. Subsequently, budding occurred almost two full weeks later than the previous year. This was intentional as we had a lovely cold, wet and prolonged winter, so giving the vines an extended dormancy period was desirable and possible. The season was quite unusual in as much as rainfall was consistent throughout the spring and summer months, with some unusually heavy downpour’s occurring into late November / early December. The end of summer, heading into the harvesting season, was also subject to regular showers which made picking days a bit more complicated than usual.
Harvest Report and Vinification
These grapes were picked on the 11th March, late in the early 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 onto the sorting table, to remove anything that may have been missed by the vineyard pickers, then transferred directly into the press.
From here, the juice was drained immediately, in order to obtain the ideal depth of colour. The grapes were then 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, which 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.