Merlot

Ideal with rich baked pasta and various moderately rich red meat dishes such as lamb and veal.

A relatively easy growing season with moderate weather throughout, following a cold wet winter. An exceptionally warm early spring ensured a successful budburst and flowering with good even shoot growth. Above average rain at the end of October kept soil moisture optimum during the later hot summer. Gale force winds in January caused damage to some of our exposed mountainous vineyards, reducing yields a little. An excellent early harvest with full bodied, generous wines with intense, complex fruit flavours.

Time in barrel 18 months, which included several rackings to gradually clarify the wine and assist maturation. The wine was bottled unfined and unfiltered by hand on the property.

Handpicking into 20 kg lugboxes. Destemming and gentle crushing directly into small 2 ton open top fermentation tanks. Spontaneous natural yeast fermentation @ max. 27°C with the cap of skins punched down manually 1-3 times a day for 12 to 18 days. Wine drained directly to barrels together with single pressing from traditional basket press. Malolactic fermentation in the barrel. 30% new French oak.

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.