Chenin Blanc

After the grapes were cooled down, we proceeded to press a third of the production as whole bunch clusters. The rest of the production we destemmed and crushed into bins, and put back into the cool room for some additional skin cold soaking. After 7 days’ worth of cold soaking at 10 degrees Celsius, we pressed half of the volume that was originally crushed. This accounted to another third. Then lastly we fermented the last third of the production - still in bins – on the skins until dry. We had daily punch downs and concentrated extraction of the flavour in the skins. The wine was left on the skins for an additional 5 days after a complete fermentation.

Voor Paardeberg region mainly cultivates dryland vineyards, which means that the better winter rain of 2018/2019 was extremely welcome. 2018 May and June were reasonably cold and wet – sufficient to meet the vineyards’ cold needs. A very warm period towards the end of July caused some vineyards to experience early bud burst. However, inconsistent weather conditions during September with regular cold fronts slowed shoot growth and bud burst. This led to uneven growth patterns in most cases. Strong winds during the flowering period also led to uneven/poor berry set and this eventually led to lower productions. The temperatures were very moderate during December and January. As soon as the shoot growth caught up, the consensus was that the vineyards’ canopies were the best in years, due to sufficient winter rain in Voor Paardeberg area, although the drought from the past three years still leant to smaller bunches. The first heat wave only occurred at the beginning of February. We harvested our Chenin towards the end of February

These 3 portions were all separately fermented and then after all 3 were completely fermented, these portions were blended and put into neutral barrels for 8 months for maturation.