Vagabond

2023 marks the third vintage of the significant return “pivot” back to the “two winters” maturation of Vagabond – i.e. one winter in barrel, followed by a second winter in tank, allowing the wine to fully integrate & build mid-pallet, structure & naturally settle. The fruit is either crushed directly into small pneumatic press & allowed a few hours skin contact prior to gentle pressing or extremely slow whole-bunch pressed in an old horizontal basket press; thereafter all juice was settled overnight prior to racking with a fair share of fine lees into old 400L, 500L & 600L French oak casks. Each climate is fermented separately, long cool ferments of 3 ½ weeks plus are favoured. Some of the barrels undergo MLF, some don’t and after about 11 months a barrel selection of the components are made & blended into a temperature controlled Inox tank with fine lees and allowed a further 11 months of tempering prior to bottling unfined & unfiltered, with small amounts of sulphur utilized.

Combination of over 17 low yielding prime vineyard sites scattered across the length & breadth of the Cape from the Swartland, Stellenbosch, Elgin, Tradouw, Piketberg, Constantia, Montagu & Voor-Paardeberg - combining a myriad of ancient soils, aspects & climes representing vines ranging in age from 15 to 61 years old. Each site is hand harvested at dawn from mid-January to early March. A preceding cold and rainy winter, lead into a cool spring & a troublesome summer minus heatwaves – a vintage punctuated by serious and persistent rain, disease pressure and crushing crucial picking decisions resulted in a wet “normally chaotic” harvest – we only bottled two red wines from this vintage! An ultra elegantly troublesome vintage resulted in wines for cellaring &/or early enjoyment. 2023’s an elegant, linear & concentrated vintage, with great depth and nuance.