Reserve Collection Chardonnay

The grapes were de-stemmed, crushed and pressed to stainless steel tanks for settling overnight or whole bunch pressed after a night in the cold room with no settling and subsequent racking. Only the free run juice from the best blocks is used for the Reserve Collection Chardonnay. The juice from the de-stemmed batches was then racked and run off to barrel for fermentation with selected yeast. After fermentation the wine was topped and left on the lees with regular lees stirring for 9 months.

This 100% Chardonnay is made from grapes grown on Tokara’s Stellenbosch farm on the slopes of the Simonsberg. The soils are all Oakleaf from Granitic origin with varying levels of Sandstone boulders in the profile. It is a deep clay rich soil. The slopes vary between South-Eastern to North Western aspects at altitudes between 300 and 360 m above sea level. The vines cropped between 6 and 7 tons per hectare. The grapes were hand-picked between the 30th January and 21st February at optimal flavour ripeness at sugars at around 22 to 23.6 degrees brix and 6.5 to 7.5 g/l acid.

30% of the barrels were allowed to complete malolactic fermentation. The barrels were all tight grain French oak 228 litre barrels of which 36% were new the rest were older barrels. The wine was bottled in December 2019.