in the vineyard : Origin: Paarl, Coastal Region
Climate: Winter Rainfall approximately 600mm per annum. The estate is situated along the south western slopes of Paarl Mountain at an altitude of between 140 and 250 meters and benefits from cooling summer breezes from the Atlantic Ocean.
Irrigation: Limited irrigation of between 50 and 100mm is applied during drier summers in order to allow for optimum development and ripening of grapes.
Soils: Vary from decomposed granited to well drained sandy loam with gravel underlays.
Coopers: Sylvain, Schahinger & Trust.
Age of vines: 5 - 20 years
Clones: P148B
Rootstock: R99/110 - 14
Vines per hectare: 3000
Soil: Decomposed granite
Trellising: Trellised and bush vines
Yield: 8 tons per hectare
in the cellar : The grapes were destemmed and transferred to open and closed stainless steel fermentation tanks. After the addition of selected yeast, the juice, together with the skins, were allowed to ferment at controlled temperatures of 25ºC and 28ºC. During fermentation, skins that tend to rise to the top were regularly pushed down or fermenting juice were pumped over the cap to cool the cap and to optimise flavour and colour extraction. At 5° Balling juice was drained from the skins and fermentation allowed to continue in closed tanks. Any juice remaining in the skins were recovered with the use of a gentle tank press. After allowing for malolactic fermentation the wine was racked from the lees and transferrerd to 225L oak barrels for maturation.
Barrel maturation: 9 months
Type of Wood: 3% new French Oak, 7% Hungarian, rest 2nd / 3rd fill
Bottling date: 25 July 2006