Hill&Dale Pinotage 2013

Colour: Intense ruby with defined purple edges.
Bouquet: Fruit-forward aromas of sweet cake-mix, fresh red fruit and cherry tobacco mingled with subtle oaking and earthy almonds.
Taste: Medium-bodied with well-integrated oaking and sweet fruit. The wine is friendly with intense black-cherry flavours balanced by good acidity and supple tannin structure.

This food-friendly, versatile wine will best complement succulent game burgers with camembert and cherry-compote toppings; biltong pizzas with blue cheese and caramelized onions. Wholesome Sheppard’s pie and traditional Bobotie will also be winners.

variety : Pinotage [ Pinotage with a touch of Shiraz ]

winery : Hill and Dale

winemaker : Guy Webber assisted by Nataleé Botha

wine of origin : Stellenbosch

analysis : alc : 14.58 % vol rs : 2.8 g/l pH : 3.52 ta : 5.2 g/l va : 0.64 g/l

type : Red style : Dry body : Medium taste : Fruity wooded

pack : Bottle size : 0 closure : Cork

ageing :

Possibly best at an age of around three to five years, but should last well into double digits with some respectful cellaring.

Stellenzicht's Hill&Dale label offers a range of accessibly-styled wines with a New World character for international appeal, created by award-winning winemaker Guy Webber.
Grapes for the Hill&Dale wines are selected from vineyards within the Stellenbosch region. Extensive vineyard management programmes are in place for each of the vineyards from which the fruit is selected. All aspects of the process are strictly governed so as to comply with not only the ethical standards of WIETA and the sustainability standards of the Integrated Production of Wine (IPW) system, but also with the quality standards set for HACCP and the BRC (British Retail Consortium).
The name for the range was derived from Stellenzicht's Hillandale farm, located just outside the town of Stellenbosch. The logo on the label depicts an oak leaf which is synonymous with this historic university town.

in the vineyard :

Grapes were sourced from mostly trellised vineyards established in soils of granitic origin. Pinotage is an early-ripening variety which thrives on full sunlight and slightly warmer temperatures. The 2015 vintage was, again, excellent for Pinotage and produced wines with generally more body, structure and succulence. The vintage, which can best be described as “hot and dry”, required additional supplementary irrigations in order optimally to ripen the fruit - notwithstanding the lighter yields.

about the harvest:

The grapes were harvested mechanically from 2 to 10 February 2015 at an average of 25º Balling.

in the cellar :

Skin contact was kept to a minimum with the skins being separated as soon as colour extraction was optimal. Using selected yeast strains, fermentation took place in closed horizontal stainless-steel tanks at between 24° and 26°C.
After the wine had been racked, malolactic fermentation took place spontaneously. The wine was matured in a combination of small, old French, Eastern European and American oak barrels and large French oak vats for an average of 15 months before being blended with a touch of Shiraz to add complexity. The wine was first bottled on 6 June 2016 and just over 6,300 cases of 12 x 750ml bottles were produced.
This was also the first vintage to be bottled under screwcap instead of the traditional cork.

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