Merlot

Red meat, pasta and pizza.

2021 will be remembered as an excellent vintage at Keermont. Weather conditions were very favourable beginning with a good wet winter and spring through a very moderate growing season to a late, cool and dry harvest. These factors, combined with a lot of hard work in the vineyards led to the development of a healthy, evenly ripened crop. Although our yields per hectare were not particularly high, the quality was very exciting. Grapes came in looking and tasting great with very good acidity and sugar levels. Picking and processing ran really smoothly thanks to lessons learned in previous vintages as well as a massive effort from the picking and winery teams. The Keermont winery crushed a total of 80 tons all sourced from our own vineyards.

This wine spent 20 months maturing in seasoned French oak barrels before being bottled by hand without fining and only light filtration on 25 November 2022.

Small batches of grapes are specifically selected according to ripeness, harvested by hand and vinified separately. This process is carried out gently with minimal intervention in open top fermenters using traditional methods only.

Agriculture in the Upper Blaauwklippen Valley can be traced back to 1694. In 2003 the Wraith family moved to the Western Cape from Gauteng and bought two adjacent farms. These two farms are now farmed as one Estate known as Keermont Vineyards. 2005 saw the start of a major vineyard planting programme on lands that had been fallow for a number of years. We planted 21Ha over seven years to add to an existing 8Ha of older vineyards. Our official maiden vintage was 2007 and in 2010 a spring water bottling plant on Fleurfontein was converted into a fully functional winery complete with offices tasting room processing facilities and barrel rooms.