Merlot

Red meat, pasta and pizza.

2022 will go down as a very successful and plentiful vintage at Keermont. On paper it was a vintage of two halves. The first half of the season was very cool and wet. We recorded the wettest winter since starting to farm Keermont Vineyards in 2005! These conditions led to good growth in the early season and we had to work hard to keep up with the strong growth. By Christmas time we could see that we had a lovely looking crop of grapes ripening on the healthy green vines. After Christmas the weather changed completely and we had a hot and dry run into harvest. The grapes, which we thought were going to be harvested late, ripened quickly under the healthy conditions. Harvest started on 1 February and quickly picked up tempo and before long we were going flat out picking grapes and processing in the cellar. The vineyards consistently delivered good yields and the winery tanks filled up fast. We pressed our biggest vintage ever in the Keermont Winery: just over 90 tonnes of healthy, estate grown fruit!

This wine spent 19 months maturing in seasoned French oak barrels before being bottled by hand without fining and only light filtration on 3 October 2023.

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.