| WINE | The Winery of Good Hope | ||||||||
| VARIETAL | Pinotage | ||||||||
| FEATURE | Bush Vine | ||||||||
| VINTAGE | 2009 | ||||||||
| APPELLATION | Stellenbosch, South Africa | ||||||||
| ANALYSIS |
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| PRODUCTION | 1300 (12 x 750ml.) cases |
VINEYARDS & HARVEST
If asked to choose our favourite vintage so far this century, 2009 would be it. After near-ideal climatic conditions from winter to harvest, the quality of fruit this vintage was just amazing. Not that we’re lazy, but having so little need to hand-sort the grapes was a treat and the wine simply made itself. A real non-interventionist vintage. The yields were pretty low, but the quality of flavours in the grapes and the elegance and balance of the wines is simply gorgeous.
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 early in the growing cycle, allowing for enhanced focus of flavours and the restriction to a lower yield (+/- 35 hl / ha). At harvest, all grapes were hand-picked into small lug-bins, before passing over our sorting-table.VINIFICATION
Crushed and destemmed into a large fermenter. Cold soaked for a short duration. Priority on developing elegance & fruitiness, 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 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, leaving us the luxury of bottling without sterile filtration and 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...