The harvest thus far

I asked our redwine maker, Carel Hugo, to give me a short description of how he feels about the harvest up to now. Here is what he had to say:

"Most of the Pinotage has been harvested, and now that Abe, Jaco and myself tasted most of them, I am very pleased with the quality. This year marks very good colour and intense fruit, probably due to the riper harvesting and the small berries caused by the abnormally dry year. I can hardly wait to see how they progressed after malolactic fermentation. It is only the Premium Pinotage that is still on the vines. We will harvest this on Wednesday.

Only two Shiraz tanks has been pressed, and the one already shows deep, dark plum with the other one showing good, deep colour with peppery hints.

Colour and fruit intensity looks very promising and is destined for your tipical award winning wines. 2011 Shows signs of "block buster" wines.

The Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon is busy fermenting and it is a bit too early to comment on them. I have a very positive feeling about 2011"

So there you have it. Overall the wines looks good. The Sauvignon blancs also look very promising, and I will try to get a quick chat with our white wine maker, Welma Visser for the next blog entry.

We are at 50% of the harvest now. Cultivars that still need to be harvested are: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Grenache, Tinta Barroca, Mourvedre, Petit Verdot, Cabernet franc, Shiraz, Carignan, Pinotage, Viognier, Sauvignon blanc and Cinsaut. So as you can see, still a pretty busy next few weeks ahead at Darling Cellars!

Carel on the left with Abe, our Cellar Master, on the right