in the vineyard : The designated vineyard for the making of our Reserve Chardonnay is called Korhaan, after one of South Africa’s indigenous birds. The vineyard itself is south facing and ±220 meters above sea level. It is protected from the south easter’s onslaught by two other vineyards but that does not mean that nature does not throw other curved balls, as in November 2001 the crop was destroyed by hail! The soils are classified as Clovelly which means that their origin is in the Stellenbosch granites. The vineyard is not irrigated and because of the tough growing conditions yields never exceed 6 tonnes per hectare. The 2009 vintage will be regarded as one of the best vintages of all time, very low yields with concentrated fruits and great acidities.
in the cellar : The juice, with some clarification, was racked into 50% new French oak barrels (Francois Frère, Dargaud & Jaegle) and 50% second-fill barrels, for alcoholic fermentation. The spontaneous onset of fermentation was allowed for and after 3 days the barrels were inoculated with a pure culture yeast strain. The fermentation took approximately 15 days to complete; once the sugar was fermented, all 25 barrels were topped up. Only one-third of the barrels were allowed to complete malolactic fermentation to retain optimum acidity/freshness. The young wine was left on the gross lees for 12 months with regular batonage, then stabilized and bottled on 13 April 2010.