Description
Winemaker’s comment:
The cooler start to the season helped retain lots of fruit flavor in the grapes. Late rains towards the end of February made the vintage slightly more tricky with rot management, but we succeeded and managed to make beautiful and powerful fruit driven wines with very soft tannins.
Vinification:
Due to the diversity of our soils we harvest parts of the vineyards at different times. The majority of the Cab vineyards ripen in the first two weeks of March. All the fruit are hand-picked and sorted in the cellar before vinification with two yeast cultures – Anchor 372 and Lallemand D21. Fermentation takes place at 25-28°C with 3-4 pump-overs and punch downs evenly spread from 06:00 to 22:00. In the first half of fermentation we aerate the fermenting juice with every second pump over. Total maceration including fermentation was 11-15 days after which we pressed and allowed for some vineyards to do malo in barrels and the balance in Stainless Steel tanks. The wine was racked twice during the barrel maturation time of 16 months. This wine has 30% new oak and the balance 2nd and 3rd fill barrels.
Soil & Terroir:
All of the vineyards are on North facing slopes. The soils consist of rocky clay of 10 to 15 %, which gives good water retention ability. Supplementary irrigation was hardly necessary due to the late rains we had just prior to ripening.
Tasting note:
This is a 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. Although still young the tannins is very soft and fruit driven. The wine immediately shows flavours of black berries, cassis and dark chocolate. The palate is smooth with fine tannins and lingering fruity concentrated aftertaste.
Decanting is advised.
Technical Data:
Alc.: vol %
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Food:
This would go well with venison, beef, cheese and even a well matured cigar.
