THE WINES OF KEVIN GRANT

(Red Blend – Pinotage, Pinot Noir & Cinsault)

WINE OF ORIGIN: HEMEL-EN-AARDE RIDGE

Winemaker’s Notes:

Despite the extraordinarily dry conditions that prevailed for most of the growing season, temperatures remained temperate during the final months leading up to harvest. The smaller berries that resulted from these dry conditions have produced this wine – substantial concentration and length, balanced by exquisite poise and refinement.

Fruit was sourced from carefully selected vineyard sites with one goal in mind – to create a style of wine that charms and seduces one all because of the authentic and accurate expression of these very sites. It is a seamless blend of three varietals, Pinot noir, Cinsault and cool-climate Pinotage (a family tree of the two parent varietals and progeny). However, the emphasis of this blend remains entirely on style rather than cultivar make-up. Cultivars are after all merely vehicles to express terroir and not the expression of a wine itself.

The three cultivars were handpicked, sorted and crushed into open fermenters. Here they each underwent cold maceration on their skins for seven to ten days before fermentation commenced. At completion of their ferment, each batch was pressed off separately to barrel where malolactic fermentation took place. Careful maturation in tight-grain French oak barriques, 20% of which were new, for a period of 11 months followed before the wine was blended and bottled in January 2019.