The wine displays a stunning deep purple colour with a ruby red rim. The nose leads with notes of ripe blueberries and blackberries intermeshed with subtle clove spice. There are aromas of cedar and vanilla giving a beautiful perfume which supports the hint of blue violets emanating from the glass. The palate is classy and refined with rich dark fruit and a silky mid palate. Grilled lamb cutlets with rosemary, venison stew or even suckling pig. The wine leaves one with an appealing chalky finish and a hint of pepper spice.

The average yield is around 10 t/ha. The grapes were hand- picked on the 9th and 11th February.

The grapes are picked at optimum flavour and phenolic ripeness with sugars of between 24.1 to 24.5 degrees brix and acidities around 5.5 g/l.

The grapes are handpicked and loaded into a cold store where they are chilled down to approximately 6 degrees Celsius. 25% of the grapes are first loaded whole bunch into the tank. The remainder of the grapes were de-stemmed and crushed directly into tanks for fermentation without the use of pumps. There is first a period of cold maceration for up to 5 days before the fermentation starts spontaneously (without the use of selected yeast strains). The fermentation took place in wooden upright (foudre) fermenters. Pump-overs, dellastage and punching down of the cap were implemented twice a day for extraction until fermentation was completed. The tanks were given maceration post fermentation if the quality and tannin profile of the wine warranted it. The wines were put to barrel for malolactic fermentation after which they were racked, sulphured and put back to barrel for a further maturation. The wines spent a total of twenty months in 20% new French oak Demi Muid barrels and- the rest being older French barrels. There are minimal racking’s during maturation. The wine matures on the gross lees for around 10 months after which it is racked at the time of blending. The wine is then matured for a further 12 months (total of 22 months) before being racked again just before bottling. The wine was bottled unfiltered and without fining in January 2018.

4066 bottles were produced.