Wild Yeast Viognier Wine

Every grape are selected and picked, by hand, from one single vineyard Block. They are than packed onto pallets in 10 kg crates into the cold storage room. Here I will keep the grapes for one day to chill down to 6 degrees.

All white varietals are crushes destemmed into isolated, close draining tank. Than I will handle each varietal on its own unique way threw the wine making process.

This wine has notes of Naartjies, Pineapple and Citrus, backed with a round, soft, elegant pallet.

The grapes gets picked at a high Balling (density of the sugar in the juice) of 28 to start the fermentation with. With the high sugar level, the wild yeast struggles to dry ferment. This will give a natural sweet wine with a sugar above 30 grams.

I use mainly free- run juice to make this wine. The free- run drains into small tanks. This juice clarifies naturally over night, at 6°C. The clarified juice is raked off the lees into a tank where the fermentation process starts. Fermentation starts naturally with wild yeast from the grapes. The wild yeast normally starts fermentation at 12°C. When the temperature reaches 18°C, I decrease the temperature again to 12°C and put the fermentation juice into barrel for the barrel fermentation process. French oak barrels are used, but not new wood. The characteristics of the vineyard are better expressed by using older barrels. When fermentation is done the wine will mature on the lees until bottling. This normally takes about 12 months. After this period I stabilize the wine and bottle by making use of a bottling unit on farm. The wine bottles are also labeled by hand.