| WINE | The Winery of Good Hope | ||||||||
| VARIETAL | Pinotage | ||||||||
| FEATURE | Bush Vine | ||||||||
| VINTAGE | 2011 | ||||||||
| APPELLATION | Stellenbosch, South Africa | ||||||||
| ANALYSIS |
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| PRODUCTION | 5000 (12 x 750ml.) cases |
VINEYARDS & HARVEST
These grapes are entirely from beautiful old bushvines, on the Helderberg Mountain at the heart of the estate on which we are located in Stellenbosch. These bushvines 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.
2011 was an intriguing vintage –our earliest ever start, 25th January, and our latest ever finish, 5th April. That in itself is a complete contradiction as one either picks early or late, but not both. This occurrence was due to some weird weather patterns which saw the early varieties ripening especially early and the later ones, later than normal. Interestingly, the ones in the middle (such as Merlot) were the most difficult. But the Pinotage was sensational. Ripe at lower sugars, with great balance, we picked the fruit at the end of January. Yields were up on the extremely low levels of 2010 but still at only 55 HL/ hectare. Lovely small berries, no sunburn rot or any other distraction. All grapes were hand harvested into small lug-bins and tractored straight in to our winery, only 200m from this vine.
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 fining or 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...