Three Pines Cabernet Sauvignon

Pair with ostrich fillet, springbok loin or roasted leg of lamb.

This wine is based on our best block of cabernet — a higher elevation block with a finely textured decomposed granite soil with a clay sub-soil and a gentle Southwest-facing slope. The wines made from this vineyard (including our single-vineyard syrah) always seem to have good ripeness coupled with good natural acidity and a unique floral note that sets it apart from our other blocks of cabernet.

The wine was basket pressed and racked directly to barrel for malo-lactic fermentation and subsequent barrel maturation. A mix of coopers was used, all French oak, all 300 litre, about 70% new and the balance second-fill.

The grapes for this wine were hand-harvested in mid March. They were picked into small lug boxes and cooled overnight in a refrigerated container to about 14 degrees C., then de- stemmed and carefully hand-sorted and crushed into small open fermentation vats and cold-soaked for 2-3 days until natural fermentation started. The following day they were inoculated with a mix of yeasts, half with a South African strain and the other half with an imported Bordeaux yeast. About 25% of the wine was fermented with natural yeasts. Regular, vigorous punchdowns were given every 4 hours for the first half of fermentation, then every 6-8 hours thereafter.

Stark-Condé Wines is located in the picturesque Jonkershoek Valley in Stellenbosch. It is a dramatic valley with steep changes in vineyard elevation from 150 to 600 metres making for a range of sites with distinct characteristics. At Stark-Condé they stick to traditional winemaking methods: open tank fermentation meticulous sorting of grapes hand-punchdowns basket pressing and maturation in small French oak barrels.