Syrah

Serve with a lamb burger and sweet potato fries.

Winter temperatures at the start of the 2020 vintage were moderate with below average rainfall. Fortunately, we had a wet spring which prompted the vines to grow strongly and develop a decent size crop. Early season was marked by fairly erratic temperatures with several heat spikes. These factors made farming quite tough with increased pressure from disease and insects and the vineyard team worked hard to prepare a good looking crop. Mid-summer temperatures were fairly moderate although we did experience a short heat wave in January. This was followed by a gale force South-East wind which hammered the vineyards. The light crop ripened quickly and, although we started picking at a fairly normal time, by 10 March we had picked all of the grapes for our wines.

This wine spent 20 months maturing in seasoned 500 and 225 Litre French oak barrels before being bottled by hand on 19 November 2021.

All grapes used in producing our wines are grown on Keermont Vineyards. Small parcels of grapes are specifically selected according to ripeness, harvested by hand and vinified separately. This process is carried out gently and naturally 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.