| WINE | The Winery of Good Hope | ||||||||
| VARIETAL | Pinotage | ||||||||
| VINTAGE | 2007 | ||||||||
| APPELLATION | Stellenbosch, South Africa | ||||||||
| ANALYSIS |
|
||||||||
| PRODUCTION | 4500 (12 x 750ml.) cases |
VINEYARDS & HARVEST
The 2007 vintage was characterised by a heat-wave at the end of January, hitting temperatures over 40 degrees. It was important to retain natural acidity without the sugars going through the roof. Quite a balancing act in fact. The result turned-out to be a combination of extremely healthy fruit and beautiful, balanced flavours.
These grapes are entirely from a single block of vineyards, all bushvines, on the Helderberg Mountain at the heart of the estate on which we are based in Stellenbosch. The vines are over 30 years old and are of an age that allows for spice and fruit to impact on equal terms. Green harvest thinning was carried-out sufficiently early in the growing cycle, allowing for focused development of a smaller yield (+/- 40 hl / ha). At harvest, all grapes were hand-picked into small lug-bins, before being hand-sorted.VINIFICATION
Crushed and destemmed into a large fermenter. Cold soaked for a short duration. Priority on developing elegance, & fruitiness and avoiding bitterness and harsh tannins that Pinotage is normally renowned for, coming largely from the skins and pips. We also wanted to retain the underlying spicy minerality from the local soils. Relatively short fermentation of under a week, solely of free-run juice. No pressings used whatsoever, again with elegance in-mind. The wine was matured in stainless steel tank using the natural CO2 content in the wine on the lees to act as protection. No sulphur addition in tank. No residual sugar as fermented dry, and none added, meaning no sterile filtration required. Leaving us the luxury of bottling without sterile filtration, allowing all the juicy fruit flavours, the rich colour and berry ripeness to stay in the bottle and not in filter sheets.
WINEMAKER'S COMMENTS
By handling the grapes and the ferment as we did, we were able to focus all of the good aspects of Pinotage’s heritage into the bottle (cherry fruit related to Pinot, spiciness related to cinsault) and avoid all of those that have so often made Pinotage infamously awful. Using free-run juice only is reflected in the red cherries, violets and juicy palate, which finishes with balance, length, a touch of minerality and some really funky spice. Definitely a Pinotage you can drink a bottle of on your own. Even slightly chilled. Now we’re hooked, we’ll be making a lot more like this...