Bush Vine Pinotage 2016

These grapes are entirely from beautiful old bush-vines, on the Helderberg Mountain at the heart of the estate on which we are located in Stellenbosch. These bush vines are between 35 and 42 years old and are of an age that allows for spice and fruit to impact on equal terms. At harvest, all grapes were hand-picked into small lug-bins, before passing over our sorting-table.

The 2016 vintage was even smaller than 2015. We experienced a very dry winter and a hot ripening season so harvest was early again to manage the precise timing of picking. It is always tricky as we need sufficient phenolic ripeness while ensuring the acidity is retained and alcohol is restrained.

IN THE CELLAR

Everything was destemmed (but not crushed) into a large fermenter, so all of the berries stayed intact to carry-out carbonic maceration then cold soaked for a short duration. Our priority is always on developing elegance & fruitiness and avoiding bitterness and harsh tannins for which Pinotage is normally notorious. We also wanted to retain the underlying spicy minerality from the local soils. Relatively short fermentation of a week, solely draining the free-run juice. No pressings used whatsoever, again with elegance in mind. The wine was matured in stainless steel tank using the natural CO2 content in the wine on the lees to act as protection. We added no sulphur in tank leaving us the luxury of bottling without fining or sterile filtration and allowing all the juicy fruit flavours, the rich colour and berry ripeness to stay in the bottle and not in filter sheets.

A NOTE FROM THE WINEMAKER

By handling the grapes and the ferment as we did, we were able to focus all of the good aspects of Pinotage's heritage into the bottle (cherry fruit related to Pinot, spiciness related to Cinsault) and avoid all of those that have so often made Pinotage infamously awful. Using free-run juice only is reflected in the red cherries, violets and juicy palate, which finishes with balance, length, a touch of minerality and some really funky spice. Definitely a Pinotage you can drink a bottle of on your own. Even slightly chilled. Now we're hooked, we'll be making a lot more like this.