Blueberry Hill Shiraz

A great accompaniment to slow braised pork chops or roasted rack of lamb with parmesan mash and crisp garden veggies.

Harvested from a 37 year old block of Shiraz planted to clay soils in the Bottelary. A small arid patch inside this vineyard has been replanted yearly for stokkies dying but without success – the last lone survivors in the murderous clay soil have now been honoured by a separate harvest delivering low yields with intense blueberry perfume – so we sing to them: I found my thrill!!! On Blueberry Hill!!! ……Louis Armstrong – o yeah!!!

Grapes are picked between 24-25 balling. 58% of it is whole bunch fermented and the rest crushed into open tank for 6 days skin contact with manual punch downs. Soft basket pressing with 17% fresh stalks allows gentle extraction of dense dark flavours before 12 months barrel maturation in older 500l French oak barrels. Minimal intervention allows for a true expression of the grape.

Think of it this way: many many thousands of moons, ago – the best wines of the past were made by normal craftsmen going out into the forest and picking wild berries - grapes and vinifying some of the most precious art the world has ever seen or drunk. Are we not overthinking or overcomplicating wine so very often? Inspired by those winemakers of the distant past and looking at the future of the South African wine industry and her renegade young guns receiving great international recognition, we decided to put our art into small bespoke batches of ArtiSons wines, each uniquely sculpted true to nature and true to vine.