Chenin Blanc

Serve chilled on sunny summer days, with a picnic or next to the beach. Pairs very well with most seafood (salmon, calamari, seafood Paella, seafood curry, mussels, lobster, and lemon butter prawns). Serve with poultry and exciting fresh garden salads. Exceptional with roasted duck, vegetarian vegetable dishes, and lovely with cheese platters. The wine has sufficient structure to pair with barbequed lamb or pork chops.

Welgegund received 848mm, (pre harvest) annual rainfall. This exceeds the norm of around 650mms a year. This made canopy management, suckering and leave breakage extremely important. Excellent budding and berry development took place. Winter was very cold, keeping the wines dormant until spring, with moderate summer conditions ensuring even ripening and above average yields of excellent quality grapes, resulting in complex, layered wines with fresh and pure flavours. This 2022 Chenin Blanc was made from selected blocks of dryland vines with limited yields of exceptional fruit. Registered with the Old Vine Project, this vineyard was planted in 1974 (48 years old).

The wine was aged for 12 months, with blending thereafter. The wine was bottled on 29 August 2023.

The grapes were harvested by hand as early as possible to keep them cool. The grapes were chilled to 5°C to minimise oxidation prior to whole-bunch pressing. The chilled juice was settled for 72 hours and racked to different fermentation vessels. A portion of the wine was fermented in 500L French oak barrels whilst others were fermented separately using different yeast strains, adding to the complexity of the final blend.

The heritage wines, all handcrafted from old character plantings on our farm in Wellington, celebrate a unique combination of the decomposed granite terroir, the exceptional light and the timeless mastery of the winemaker, and offer an enduring expression of the classic Cape wine tradition so globally envied of this region for centuries.