Elevation 393

Delicious with a char grilled whole red cabbage with lamb fat drippings. Slow roasted lamb or a fine rib eye steak.

A difficult and challenging vintage. Winter started late, but we had enough cold to ensure good budbreak in spring. We had below average winter rain, but a good normal spring. An early hot summer with several heatwaves throughout the season meant lower growth and a smaller crop with small berries. The little bit of supplementary water we could apply (sooner than ever before) went a long way to help keep quality high. Harvest was our earliest ever, starting more than a week early. The hot weather and particularly warm evenings meant acidity was low and we had to pick earlier than usual. Thankfully cooler weather arrived in the middle of February, preserving the complex flavours to produce the best wine of the vintage.

Mostly new French oak used. Blending done after 9 months. Time in barrel 20 months, which included several rackings to gradually clarify the wine and assist maturation. Bottled by hand, unfined and unfiltered, on the property.

Handpicking into 20 kg lugboxes. 100% destemming and gentle crushing directly into open top fermenters. Spontaneous natural yeast fermentation @ max. temp. 30°C. Time on skins 12 - 15 days, with cap of skins punched down (pigeage) 1 – 4 times a day. Wine drained directly to barrels together with single pressing from traditional basket press.

A small family winery at the end of the Upper Blaauwklippen Road in the mountains above Stellenbosch South Africa. Established in 1992 by architect David Trafford & artist wife Rita with the focus on high end red wines of great intensity & longevity using minimal intervention production methods.