Walker Bay Pinot Noir

Escalopes of beef, covered in a reduced, light red wine sauce and fresh sage.

The grapes are packed in to large -surface area crates to limit pressure on the bunches. The day’s harvest is cooled down overnight to 8ºC in the winery’s refrigerated cold room. The bunches are sorted on a conveyor, destemmed, and fall directly to the ferm enter (with no crushing). No sulphur is used in the winemaking, allowing diverse micro-organisms from the grape itself to flourish unrestrained in the spontaneous fermentation. Some parcels also contain a discretionary percentage of whole bunches together with their stems. Cold maceration ensues for 4 to 6 days at 8 to 10°C. All parcels are fermented with indigenous yeasts, and only pigeage (punching down) applied for extraction. The wine spends approximately 15 - 20 days on the skins before pressing. After pressing the wine is racked and left to complete its malolactic ‘fermentation’ and maturation in barrel on its lees.

Newton Johnson Vineyards is owned and managed by the Newton Johnson family. The farm is based in the upper Hemel en Aarde Valley near the seaside town of Hermanus an hour and a half’s drive out of Cape Town. This is a popular tourist destination famous for some of the most spectacular land-based whale watching in the world lush indigenous fynbos a floral kingdom home to 1500 species and exclusive to the Cape mountain walks and bike trails. Led by Dave a Cape Wine Master with a thesis on Pinot Noir and his wife Felicity (nee Newton) the Newton Johnson family moved to the Upper Hemel en Aarde Valley in 1995 built a cellar and started planting vines shortly thereafter. This enthusiasm for wine and Pinot noir in particular was passed on to and eagerly adopted by his sons Bevan and Gordon. They in turn have taken this family cellar and vineyards to new heights in exploring the nuances of this grape and their vineyards.