Kokerboom

The grapes are picked in the Citrusdal Mountains and it does require a major load of logistics to get the grapes down to the winery: the journey to the vineyard takes about 4 and a half hours so we only return to the cellar at the end of the day and then place the grapes in our cool room (at 4 degrees) for the night. The next day the grapes are sorted and the whole bunches go into the press. The pressing lasts 3 hours and in that period a margin of settling of the juice takes place in the collecting tank. The turbid juice is then transferred to one of our old foudres for fermentation. The juice composition of the Kokerboom vineyard is usually very low in natural nitrogen and yeast nutrients and the fermentation takes about 10 days to start and normally equires 6 - 8 months to complete, which often brings us to the following spring. By then the malolactic fermentation would usually have come to completion as well.

The wine is left in cask for the entire first 12 months on the fermentation lees and we bottle from the lees. We add about 60ppm of sulphur 2 - 3 weeks prior to bottling to ensure it is evenly distributed throughout the tank. We cannot mix it in for everything is still on the gross lees.