Circumstance Cape Coral Rosé 2016

The Cape did not experience a very cold winter in 2015, with near perfect days lingering at 20 degrees Celsius. The evenings were cold but not excessively so. We also experienced the driest winter to date with half the normal rainfall. Budburst took place at the beginning of September which was definitely earlier than usual. It was a proper spring with a lot of sun and warm temperatures. We started picking a week earlier than last year (which was already early). A lot of the producers were significantly down on crop yield (some even up to 50%). Fortunately our biodynamic vines have a deep root system (approximately six metres deep), compared to conventional vineyards (digging only one meter deep) and we were not down on yield by too much. With the berries being very small this year the flavours were fantastic. Some raisins still developed on the later varietals, which we got rid of in the cellar. The skins on the reds were thicker than normal but also brimming with concentration.

Grapes were hand harvested and a gentle whole bunch pressing in our new horizontal basket press, extracted only the finest juice. No further maceration of the juice with the skins was allowed. The juice was run down via gravity into tank and left to settle naturally for 12 hours. From there we racked the clean juice off to wooden fermenters to start the fermentation on its own, with wild yeasts that occur naturally in the vineyard. The reason why we ferment in our older wooden fermenters is to ensure a slow ingress of oxygen throughout the process and therefore a longer fermentation without picking-up any oak aromas. The wine was then left on the primary lees to add further complexity before bottling.