in the vineyard : Viticulturist: Eben Archer
The grapes were sourced from a vineyard planted in 1991 on very gentle slopes facing west to south-west, in soils originating from decomposed granite and Table Mountain sandstone. The vines, grafted onto nematode-resistant rootstocks of Richter 110 and are trellised on a five-wire fence system, yielded an average of 3,88 tons per hectare.
The 2001 vintage was characterised by high average temperatures (both day and night) while rainfall was below average. With Cabernet Sauvignon being a late-ripener, good rains in January eliminated moisture stress during the ripening phase and resulted in good fruit quality. In general the berries were smaller than normal with good skin/ juice ratio, excellent flavours and good acidity.
in the cellar : The grapes were harvested by hand in mid-March, destalked, gently crushed and cooled down to 15ºC before being transferred to the fermenting tank. A pure yeast culture (NT50) was inoculated into the must and the fermentation continued for four days during which time the temperature reached 29ºC. The still-fermenting juice was then drained off the skins at 4º Balling and, together with the press juice was transferred to a settling tank before being transferred to oak the following day.
Fermentation was allowed to complete in the barrels with malolactic fermentation being induced once the alcoholic fermentation was complete. The wine then spent the next 30 months maturing on its fermentation lees with no racking taking place during this period. Barrels used for maturation were all 300 litre “hogsheads†of which 67% were of French Oak and 33% of American White Oak.