Waterkloof Circle of Life Red 2014

Winter sets up a strong foundation for the rest of the seasons to follow. It prepares the vines for the coming growing season and its effects can be felt throughout. Cold weather conditions during the early part of winter allowed for even bud break during spring. We did however experience an earlier than normal bud burst due to rising winter temperatures at the end of the season. Rainfall was very low during the winter period, which is always a challenge in areas where we rely on winter rains to replenish our dam and groundwater levels. The dry conditions followed through into summer which contributed to a smaller crop. Bouts of extreme hot weather early in January caused sunburn in dryland areas and had a negative effect on the size of the crop. Fortunately, the warm spell was followed by cooler temperatures for the rest of the ripening period. Grapes could ripen evenly and properly and harvest started about two weeks later than normal due to the cool growing conditions during the final ripening stage.

We harvest according to taste and find it essential to spend a lot of time in the vineyards to see how the flavours develop. All grapes were hand-picked and brought to the cellar by our horses. To ensure that only the best berries are used, we sorted all grapes by hand. It was then placed into our wooden fermenters via our gravity system. The Rhône varietals were whole-bunch fermented and the Bordeaux varietals were destemmed. The fermentation started naturally with yeast present on the grapes to enhance the flavours prevailing in the vineyards. Throughout the fermentation process we did soft punch downs twice a day to gently and slowly extract the tannins. The wines spent around 30 days on the skins during which the tannins were able to soften. After the maceration time on the skins we ran the wine down via gravity – still no pumping. The grape skins also fell through, into the basket press and were softly pressed to gently extract the last bit of wine, aroma and colour from the skins. The varietals were aged separately in French oak. 600L Barrels for the Rhône varietals and 225L barrels for the Bordeaux varietals. Only 20% were new barrels to avoid dominance of wood aromatics in our wines. After 18 months in barrel we blended the Syrah (56%), Merlot (17%), and Petit Verdot (27%) together and kept it for another year in our wooden fermenters. This wine is unfined and gently filtered.