Vantage Pinotage

Enjoy with venison or dishes with a bit of spice.

2020 saw good weather in flowering and all the way through to harvest. A relatively mild summer allowed for great ripening and good ripeness levels at harvesting. The grapes were harvested on the 7th of February. The vineyard is a 2 hectare block of bush vines on a granitic ridge high up on the estate. It faces completely south and is therefore exposed to the prevailing summer breezes off the ocean to the south and sheltered from the heat of the afternoon sun. This allows for extended hang time of the fruit without it becoming overripe. The vines are 20 years old and yielded 5 tons per hectare for this vintage. A green harvest at 80% veraison limits the variation in ripeness in the bunches and ensures more even ripeness at harvest.

Maturation takes place in 225 litre French oak barriques for 18 months. 30% new oak is used with the remainder made up of second and third fill barriques. The wine is then racked to a large concrete tank where it is allowed to mellow for 6 months before being bottled. Unfined and unfiltered.

The grapes are hand harvested and then sorted on a conveyor belt in the cellar. The majority of the wine is fermented uninoculated in 7000 litre French oak tanks. 30% of the stems are added back to the tanks. This portion spent 14 days on the skins before being drained. A small component (15% in the final wine) was fermented using carbonic maceration which brings freshness and lifts the fruit on the final wine.

“We would like people who drink our wines to experience the estate our soils our slopes our vines and our terroir. Wine should be experienced and not merely drunk and we endeavour to make every bottle of our wine a memorable experience. We believe wine is made in the vineyards and our goal is to allow the vineyards to express themselves by interfering as little as possible. As a result we have adopted a minimalist approach in both the vineyards and the cellar. The idea being to minimalise the human influence on the final product. In the vineyards we do everything by hand from pruning to harvesting. We are also proud members of the Biodiversity and Wine Initiative and of the Integrated Production of Wine Scheme. We have set aside 30% of the estate and dedicated it to the Western Capes indigenous flora and fauna. The goal in the cellar is to facilitate the production of wine from grapes and not merely manufacture wine. This is again done by following the minimalist approach of nothing added apart from a small amount of SO2 prior to bottling. All grapes are hand sorted in the cellar to remove m.o.g. (material other than grapes) and unripe grapes before they go to tank. Wild or naturally occurring yeasts are allowed to ferment the grapes before the wine is drained off the skins and allowed to mature in French oak barrels before being racked and bottled.