Durbanville Hills Biesjes Craal Sauvignon Blanc 1999

Name: Durbanville Hills Biesjes Craal Sauvignon Blanc 1999
SKU: 517

Biesjes Craal Sauvignon Blancs bright green colour confirms that this wine has guts and stying power. The answer lies in harvesting ripe grapes - truly ripe according to taste rather than laboratory tests. On the nose, this wine opens up with flavours of melon, pineapple, green apple and a whiff of ripe gooseberries. The strong grass character so typical of a colder region Sauvignon Blanc delicately rolls over these tropical fruit flavours to finish the nose. These intense flavours continue on the palate to blossom into a unique wine.

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variety : Sauvignon Blanc [ 100% Sauvignon Blanc ]

winery : Durbanville Hills Wine

winemaker : Martin Moore

wine of origin : Coastal

analysis : alc : 13.0 % vol rs : 2.0 g/l pH : 3.68 ta : 7.7 g/l

type : White style : Dry

pack : Bottle

AWARDS

Veritas 2000 Double Gold Medal

ageing : This is one of the few South African Sauvignon Blancs which will last at least three years in the bottle.

in the vineyard : Geographically, Durbanville Hills is situated virtually between France and New Zealand. In character, Biesjes Craal Sauvignon Blanc can be placed somewhere between the earthy Sauvignons of the Loire and Sancerre regions in France and the gooseberry and grassy products of the colder New Zealand.

about the harvest: As a result of cool weather and a prolonged ripening period, Durbanville usually starts harvesting a good three weeks after the rest of the South African wine regions. The grapes from Maastricht were pressed during the second week in March, while the Bloemendal grapes reached the cellar in the last week of February. The grapes were picked in the morning when they were truly ripe and not just sugar ripe.

in the cellar : Sauvignon Blanc is a strong and vigorous grape variety. At the outset, this Biesjes Craal wine was shocked by varying the fermentation temperatures between 9 and 16Â°C. The skin flavours were protected with natural oxygen reduction, without using ascorbic acid. The grapes from Bloemendals colder south-facing slopes retained the skins for 30 hours in order to develop the natural grass flavours and balance the acid content. This allowed ample time for the potassium-rich skins to neutralise the natural high acid content of these cool region Sauvignon Blanc grapes.

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