THE SEASON LEADING UP TO 2025 VINTAGE

2024 was another wet winter, like 2023 with rains over 650mm is some areas of the Swartland.

This gave the vines a good start with bud burst being very even and slightly earlier than normal.

We had good growth and vegetation with less wind thus better flowering and fruit set, giving us a decent crop.

Although we had a great winter the spring and summer seined no rains with heat waves hitting over Christmas and early January, that end up causing lots of sun burn as version started. Lots of hand sorting had to be done during picking and in the cellar.

This was thus another perfect season for organic farming as we did as little as 3-4 sulphur sprays during the whole growing season, that provided us with perfectly “sun kissed” grapes and skins.

Lots of time was spend tasting the grapes and choosing the picking date was crucial for us to achieve balance in the wines. We ended up picking around last week of January which is more back to “normal” weather patterns.

“We pick the grapes, by hand, transport it in 20KG lug boxes to the cool room, giving the grapes time to chill over 24 hours, bringing the temperatures down to 4 degrees Celsius.

Afterwards we would hand sort the grapes, removing all materials other than grapes.
We do 100% whole cluster fermentation, with the grapes getting foot crushed in the tank by which we would crush at least 70% of the grapes.

We use some CO2 (dry ice) to protect the juices from oxidation during this process.
It will take around 4 days for the fermentation to start which will start naturally with yeast coming from the vineyards.

Once fermentation has started, we do very little extraction during fermentation as we have the sun in the vineyards doing all that hard work for us by giving us grapes that is perfectly ripe which then don’t need any manipulation during fermentation.

So, one or two pump overs during the 16 days of primary fermentation is significant for us.
After alcoholic fermentation is done, we will do a “submerge cap” where we submerge the skins into the wine for post ferment maceration. This was done for a period of 5 months after which we drain the wine, basket press the skins and that’s it, done with the “winemaking” part. We then transfer the wine to an old Foudre and wait for the magic to happen……