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TESTALONGA El Bandito ‘The Dark Side’ 2025
R405.00
Craig’s most complete expression of Syrah to date. Inspired by Côte-Rôtie and built around whole-bunch fermentation, it combines perfume, spice and savoury complexity with impressive balance and refinement.
The 2025 vintage was preceded by one of the wettest winters on record (again). A total of 689mm fell on Bandits Kloof. It was an extremely cool growing season. The first real heat came on the 25th of December; significant sunburn damage was the result, losing about 20-30% of the crop. Fortunately, this helped reduce an already big crop and resulted in a fantastic vintage. The cool growing days and nights (relatively) led to wines that are well balanced with higher natural acidities and pure fruit.
“We are extremely happy with the 2025 Dark Side and have focused specifically on increasing intensity and flavour by lowering the pH and increasing tannin without compromising drinkability.”
ANALYSIS: Alc: 12.5% | RS 0.9 g/l | TA 5.5 g/l |pH 3.57
23 in stock
Description
The wines of TESTALONGA defy convention in a lot of ways. Craig has never been accused of being “a follower” and these wines represent the avant-garde of South African wine. The fruit is farmed by Craig and his team using organic and biodynamic methods. Craig is proud of making natural wines, thus early picking, a lack of additions (minute amounts of SO2 are infrequently used) with no fining or filtration are all hallmarks of his approach. They have bought a farm in the Piketberg area in northern Swartland, and have started to plant vines as of 2018.
Additional Information
| Producer | TESTALONGA |
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