Boland Cellar Selection Cabernet Sauvignon / Shiraz 2020

The Cellar Selection range is a blended range of Boland Cellar’s leading varieties. This range offers easy-drinking wines that showcase the Cellar’s blending skills and experience. The wines are fresh and fruit-driven with softer tannins, resulting in popular wines which are ideally suited to everyday enjoyment.

The vineyards are situated around the Paarl Region, with varying climatic zones where the grapes were selected for this range. The grapes originated from two different areas, namely Paardeberg and the cooler coastal area of Philadelphia.

The grapes ripened at different times, illustrating the temperature diversity of these two areas. Grapes from the Paardeberg area’s shale soils have a longer hang-time before reaching physiological ripeness. The temperature of these soils is lower due to higher clay content and contributes to the fresh berry flavours.

Vineyards in the Philadelphia area, situated about 10 km from the ocean, produce grapes with herbaceous flavours that have a naturally high acidity due to the granite soils in which they grow. These soils are warmer and well-drained, yielding grapes with bright red berry character and a good natural acidity.

When making wines for the Cellar Selection, the aim is to introduce an element of softness and accessibility. The grapes were crushed early in the morning, followed by 24 hours of cold-soaking before fermentation commenced. Slow, cooler fermentation is essential to extract fruit flavours from the grapes, resulting in layers of clean varietal fruit and soft, ripe tannins.

After fermentation, the wine was left on the skins for one week, to ensure a softening of compounds and deep colour extraction, leading to an elegant smoothness on the palate.