Vergelegen Reserve Chardonnay 2013

The wine shows an attractive lemony yellow-green colour with a complex nose of citrus, white peach, pineapple, spice, citrus blossoms, apricot and buttered toast aromas. The taste is long and elegant with a lively minerality.

variety : Chardonnay [ 100% Chardonnay ]

winery : Vergelegen Wines

winemaker : Andre van Rensburg

wine of origin :

analysis : alc : 13.77 % vol rs : 2.8 g/l pH : 3.19 ta : 6.7 g/l

type : White style : Dry body : Full wooded

pack : Bottle size : 750ml closure : Cork

ageing : Drink over the next five years.

in the vineyard : The designated vineyard for the making of Vergelegen’s Reserve Chardonnay is Korhaan/Southern black korhaan/black bustard named 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 doesn’t mean that nature doesn’t throw other curved balls, as in November 2001 when 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 tons per hectare. The Korhaan Chardonnay was picked on 18 March 2013.

about the harvest: Grapes were whole-bunch pressed with no skin contact.

in the cellar : Grapes were whole-bunch pressed with no skin contact. The juice, with some clarification, was racked into 50% new French oak barrels (Francois Frère, Dargaud & Jaegle) and 50% secondfill and third 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. Fermentation took approximately 15 days to completeonce the sugar was fermented, all 32 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 9 months with regular battonage, then stabilized and bottled on 31 January 2014.

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