Top Cabernet Sauvignon is synonymous with South Africa’s traditionally most prestigious wine region, Stellenbosch. This wine is from a single vineyard, rooted in magnificent decomposed granite & clay soils on the Helderberg Mountain in Stellenbosch. These ocean-facing vines produce some of the most complex fruit and individual flavours of the land, combining the geological and climatic uniqueness of this site. 2008 was a good Cabernet vintage here, not least thanks to the Indian summer which burst over the vineyards following a cool and wet spell towards the end of the ripening season. All grapes are hand picked into small lug-bins then hand sorted, before being destemmed and placed in open-top 600L oak vats, each becoming its own micro-fermentation with natural wild yeast and minimal intervention.
Cap punching is carried out once or twice a day, mindful not to over-extract but to retain balance and to ensure that the wine develops its own natural (as opposed to formulaically-driven) character. This is followed by 16 months maturation, on the lees for most of that, in small French oak barrels, free run juice and pressings matured apart. The barrels are a combination of 4th fill through to new, the latter accounting for about 25% of the ultimate blend. Eventually all the barrels that make the cut are brought together and settled for a couple of months in tank before bottling, without filtration.
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