The Lion's Hill

The bunches are pressed whole and then left overnight with the enzyme. After removing from the lees, the juices are inoculated with selected yeast strains to begin fermentation in concrete tanks.

Grapes are hand-harvested from 23-year-old vines from the Northern slope of the Kanonberg mountain.

As soon as fermentation starts, the wine is moved to 40% new and 30% second fill French oak barrel and 30% third fill French Oak Barrels, where it is left to ferment for 10 months before bottling.

Hand-picked in 500kg fruit bins, the grapes were handled with minimum intervention and de-stemmed over a sorting table into 15-ton fermenters. The must was left overnight and then 10-15% of its juice was drained to concentrate the body, flavour and aroma compounds of the final product. The wine was then fermented with a preferred yeast strain and continuous timer-regular pump-over cycles, in combination with compressed air, were used to extract maximum fruit, colour and tannin.

The grapes were selected from an 18-year-old vineyard on the open Westerly side of the valley. The block faces to the West, exposing it to the afternoon sun. The soils are fairly deep and of the yellow Clovelly and red Hutton forms, which have a fair amount of clay content for good water retention. The vineyard gives great quality throughout, but there are known spots that are positively different. The selection was made out of these by tasting and chemical analyses to ensure full ripeness. The vineyards were inspected on regular visits to assess skin and seed ripeness, which is of vital importance in making great Pinotage. Picking commenced when the skins were soft and the seeds woody, guaranteeing an absolute absence of greenness and abundance of soft ripe fruit.

The wine was then matured in a combination of new and second fill, tight-grained medium toasted French oak barrels for 14 months.

Selected bunches were handpicked mid to late February from row selected vines in specific blocks at 26o Balling. Bunches were destemmed, crushed and rapidly cooled in a small open fermenter. Grapes were left to spontaneously start fermenting after which at the desired sugar the fermentation was stopped by adding alcohol to the must.

Portuguese varietals were planted in Calitzdorp during the late 1970’s with Tinta Barocca being the first to find its way to the Klein Karoo. Now Calitzdorp is known as South Africa’s Port Capital with these varietals leading the way. 30 year old vines were planted in shallow Karoo sand/clay on Buffelsvlei. Vines are trellised and micro irrigated.

Skins were then pressed and the wine was aged in old small 225 liter barrels. The wine was blended from a range of different vintages between five and 15 years.

The Heritage wines are made in a pre-modern, natural style, like top end Vouvray Chenin. We joined forces with one of the best from the homeland of Chenin and got Vincent Carême involved to help guide each vintage into a very fine wine. The process is very simple: whole bunch pressing, no Sulphur on the juice, natural yeast fermentation and very limited use of new French oak.

Leeuwenkuil block Q survived 34 seasons under dry-land farmed conditions. The 2 800 vines per hectare compete for every drop of valuable moisture in the clay and shale-dominated soil. The fruit is beautiful, tight bunches with berries of high natural acidity. 2020 was a cool, dry, long growing season. While yields on these dry-land farmed, old bush-vine vineyards were extremely low, fresh acidity and complex, layered flavour profile made for an excellent vintage.

Aged for 14 months before filling.