The world’s first White Pinotage - “The paradox of this wine is that the eye belies the other senses! Making white wine from red grapes using South Africa’s unique Pinotage grape. Whole bunch pressing prevented the juice from obtaining colour from the skins. Barrel fermented and matured for eleven months with lees stirring gives this wine a slightly creamy, nutty character to balance the tropical fruit and banana flavours.”
AGEING: 300 litre Romanian oak barrels for eleven months (7% first fill, 14% second fill, 7% third fill and 72% older)
The grapes were whole bunched pressed (i.e. without de-stemming or crushing) in a pneumatic “bag” press to minimize colour retention. Extended juice settlement for two days using a settling enzyme and bentonite removes any blush the juice may have retained. The juice (by then a coral colour) was then transferred to 300li Romanian oak barrels (7% first fill, 14% second fill, 7% third fill and 72% older barrels). Batch 3 received an acidification adjustment using tartaric acid to correct pH. Yeast (Laffort VL2) was inoculated then fermented for approximately 12 days at an average temperature of 18˚C. Fermentation caused any remaining “tinting” in colour to drop out. Malolactic fermentation was only partially encouraged in barrel after the alcoholic fermentation and the lees stirred for six months on a weekly basis by rolling the barrels. The length of time for barrel fermentation and maturation was eleven months. Protein stabilisation was undertaken using bentonite, and a gentle fining was finally done to clarify the wine prior to bottling. No filtering of the wine was undertaken except at bottling when a medium filtration (split AF70/110) was undertaken.
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