Private Cellar Pinotage

The Rijk's Private Cellar Pinotage 2021 pairs well with rich dishes like grilled meats, game, and hearty stews. It also complements hard cheeses​.

The grapes for this wine are grown in low-yielding, well-drained vertical shale/schist soils in the Tulbagh region. The vines face west-north-west and east, ensuring optimal sunlight for ripening. The yield for this vintage was 6.4 tons per hectare​.

A 48-hour cold maceration was applied to extract maximum color and fruit before fermentation. Manual punch-downs occurred three times per day during fermentation. The wine was aged for 22 months in a combination of 60% French oak and 40% American oak barrels, with 40% new, 30% second fill, and 30% third fill​.

Rijk’s is situated 120km North-East of Cape Town and 80km East of the Atlantic ocean in a Mediterranean climate. Our valley is surrounded by the Obiqua, Winterhoek, and Witzenberg mountains which reach heights of up to 1 995m. Lover of good food and collector of good wines, Neville Dorrington had been working in Cape Town for more than 20 years. In 1996 Neville and his family decided to move to the countryside and grow and produce their own wine. We fell in love with the Tulbagh valley and came across 137 hectares of virgin soils that were never cultivated. The slopes faced north, south, east, and west and the analysis of the vertical shale soils revealed the potential for low-yielding, high-quality grapes. Today Rijk’s only focuses on producing Chenin Blanc and Pinotage. Rijk’s has been named in honour of the governor Rijk Tulbagh who governed the Cape from 1751-1771.