Durbanville Hills Merlot 1999

â€œAn extrovert wine with its strong personality rooted firmly in the terroir of the hills of Durbanville. Strong mint on the nose - a mint indisputably from full-ripeness so concentrated that it turns back and forth to intense berry flavours in the mouth as it pushes to the front its intense fruit, prune flavours and violet incense. â€œA full-bodied wine that remains with you long after a last sip finished with subtle oak aromas. "The grapes came from two different vineyards on two different slopes of Durbanville. Whilst the Klein Roosboom vineyard delivered an aromatic Merlot, the other cooler vineyard gave me a perfectly structured wine. These two were allowed to develop separately and then blended together into a complex and balanced wine that will develop in complexity for up to 10 years in the bottle.â€

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variety : Merlot [ 100% Merlot ]

winery : Durbanville Hills Wine

winemaker : Martin Moore

wine of origin : Coastal

analysis : alc : 13.5 % vol rs : 2.3 g/l pH : 3.55 ta : 5.7 g/l va : 0.52 g/l

type : Red

pack : Bottle

AWARDS

Veritas 2000 Silver Medal.
Veritas 2001 Gold Medal.

ageing : 10 years

in the vineyard : Beyond the unique character of this wine, at its formative beginning, will be found the influence of the diverse and opposing slopes of Durbanville hills. The grapes for this wine were selected from two distinctly different vineyards.

about the harvest: They were picked by hand at optimum ripeness at between 25Â° and 26Â° Balling, from mid to the end of April 1999. These grapes were harvested from a sunny north-facing vineyard of Klein Roosboom, and a south-facing vineyard at Hooge Bergs Vallei.

in the cellar : The must was fermented on the skins for seven days until dry, and kept on the skins for three weeks to allow extended maceration. Fermentation took place in stainless steel Disio tanks from Italy. This cutting-edge technology allows maximum fruit, colour and tannin extraction from the skins through continuous computer-regulated pump-over cycles. The fermenting juice was kept in closed, oxygen-poor tanks, whilst the skins remained fully immersed during the entire fermentation and maceration period. After malolactic fermentation, the wine was matured for 12 months - 75% in new French oak barrels and 25% in second-fill French oak barrels. Only 300-litre barrels were used.

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