Radford Dale Winery of Good Hope Full Berry Fermentation Pinotage

IN THE VINEYARD

Two remarkable old vineyards were chosen for this interesting example of Pinotage. The first, planted on the slopes of Klapmutskop outside Stellenbosch brings ripe, full and fleshy fruit notes. The second vineyard comes from the Voor Paardeberg, where the sandy, granite soils produce wine with lovely tension and superb texture. The 2018 was another hot vintage for us with long dry days and warm nights. At harvest, all grapes were hand-picked into small lug-bins, before passing over our sorting table.

IN THE CELLAR

Everything was destemmed (but not crushed) into a large fermenter, so all the berries stayed whole to carry out carbonic maceration, then cold soaking took place for a short duration. Our priority is always on developing elegance & fruitiness and avoiding bitterness and harsh tannins for which Pinotage is notorious. We also wanted to retain the underlying spicy minerality from the local soils. Relatively short fermentation took place over a week, solely draining the free-run juice. No pressings were used whatsoever, again with elegance in mind. The wine was matured in a stainless steel tank using the natural CO2 content in the wine, on the lees to act as protection. We added no sulphur in tank leaving us the luxury of bottling without fining or sterile filtration and allowing all the juicy fruit flavours, the rich colour and berry ripeness to stay in the bottle.

FOOD PAIRING

Any Meat!