COLOMBARD

COLOMBARD

2019 Vintage: LIMITED

Total Production: 196 bottles, 8 Magnums

Wine of Origin: Slanghoek Valley – 11% vol.

Sommelier-Winemaker Collaboration with Attie Louw, Opstal Estate.

Tasting Notes: Zingy lime zest and elderflower cordial, with a beautiful fresh, crunchy acidity. Frangipani blossom on the nose, and a wet pebble minerality on the finish.

Wine Making Notes: The Slanghoek Valley is actually a little grape growing micro-climate, and is known as the land of the slow-ripening grape. Harvest occurred at the same time as the previous vintage in early March, but the grapes came in with a slightly lower sugar, meaning a slightly lower potential alcohol. Same manner of treatment, with free-run juice going straight into old French oak, letting it naturally ferment and only let it go through ‘Malo’ halfway through thus retaining that crunch, crisp acidity and all-round freshness. On bottling, nine months later, the wine was filtered, and therefore the resulting style was very much the opposite of the 2018. There was a special request by a local restauranteur for 8 magnums hand-bottled “En Rama”-style, which was an absolute pleasure to facilitate.

Service Guidelines: Serve between 8-10 deg.C, or colder still if it’s a crazy-hot day. The wine is meant to refresh your palate at the start, and then open up its offerings of complexity as it warms in your glass.

Food Pairing Suggestions: Ceviche, Pan-seared oily fish such as Salmon or Mackerel, Freshly-shucked oysters with shallot mignonette, Scandinavian Gravadlax, Pulled-pork Tacos (as it can hold up to spice), and also a varied range of Asian cuisine, as it enjoys playing with aromatic spice components such as ginger and lemongrass.

Description

2018 Vintage: SOLD OUT.

Total Production: 234 bottles, 1 Magnum

Wine of Origin: Slanghoek Valley – 12% vol.

Sommelier-Winemaker Collaboration with Attie Louw, Opstal Estate.

Tasting Notes: Juicy quince, elderflower, and English gooseberry enhancing a balanced texture on the palate, which stems from its unfiltered process.

Wine Making Notes: Harvested early March, de-stemmed and sent straight to press. Free-run juice put straight into barrel, a 6 year-old French oak barrel. The wine was left to naturally ferment with its own wild yeasts, and also left to undergo full malolactic fermentation in barrel. The wine was then given a small amount of Sulphur to protect it, and was left to mature in the barrel cellar for 9 months. The wine was taken straight out of barrel, and hand-bottled with minimal filtration, and the resulting wine was deliciously natural and cloudy. Towards the end of the bottling, the sediment lay slightly thicker at the bottom of the tank, and I decided to bottle the last 24 bottles with all the extra sediment in, and keep them aside to see what happened … If you were lucky enough to taste the “En Rama”, special requests for this style will be taken vintage-to-vintage!

Accolades: Tim Atkin SA Report: 91pts.