Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon

Best paired with rich meaty dishes such as stews, casseroles and hearty, thick- cut steaks.

Reserve status is only endowed if the grapes and resulting wine measures up to exceptional standard. Hand selected grapes from older, lower yielding vines are used.

24 Months in 225L French oak, 70% new.

Fermentation is done with a selected yeast strain under controlled temperatures. Manual plunging during this period ensures optimal colour extraction. After five days the tanks are closed and allowed to macerate for a further period, normally 10-14 days. Pressing follows and the wine is transferred to barrel for the secondary fermentation. On completion a final quality check and analysis is performed and the Reserve is then prepared for barrel ageing. Bottling is followed by hand labelling and further bottle maturation.

Le Riche Wines is situated on the slopes of the Helderberg Mountain in close proximity to the historic town of Stellenbosch. The winery was designed to replicate our previous winery in Jonkershoek which was built in 1911. With old style open top concrete fermentation tanks mixed with a modern minimum intervention wine making approach the winery provides a platform to create ultra premium red wines in a classic South African style. Production is 8000—6 cases a year with the Reserve range consisting of only about 1000 cases. The wines are rare but worth sourcing. Le Riche Wines was founded by Etienne le Riche in 1996 and is now run as a family concern. Coming from an illustrious career in the South African wine industry Etienne decided to create a winery where he could express the cultivar he had grown to love and respect Cabernet Sauvignon. The approach was simple to illustrate the nuances of Stellenbosch Cabernets as best possible. Preferring not to be inhibited by estate classification he chose to select grapes from the best possible terroirs Stellenbosch had to offer. The resulting wines have shown great elegance and class consistently proving to be of superb quality and maturation potential.