Spice Route Swartland Pinotage

Spice Route Swartland Pinotage

Five centuries ago the ancient mariners braved uncharted seas to round the Cape of Good Hope in search of exotic spices. Their nerve and dash inspire the Spice Route philosophy. We have found our signature wine style in the rolling hills along the Cape’s West Coast, where unirrigated vines produce grapes with small thick skinned berries – ripe fruit that is dense, rich and full flavoured. A passionate dedication to exceptional quality and traditional hand crafting captures the essence of this fruit in the wines of the Spice Route.

VINEYARDS
This wine is produced from a single block of bush vineyard on the Klein Amoskuil farm in Malmesbury. These unirrigated bushvines were planted in 1997 on Koffieklip soils. This deep ferricrete soil is
comprised of decomposed granite from the Paardeberg Mountain percolated with iron rich brown and red stones. Koffieklip soils produce elegant red wines with robust structure.

VINIFICATION
The bunches were fermented in 5-tonne open concrete fermenters with manual punch-down of the skins twice a day, extracting deep colour and flavour. The wine was pressed off and transferred to tight-grain American oak barrels with 30% new oak used to complete malolactic fermentation and maturation. A
small portion also matured in underground clay pots.
TASTING NOTES
This Pinotage has an intense ruby red colour with rich blackcurrant and cherry aromas. On the palate, there are intense dark fruit flavours complemented by bright acidity and subtle spice

Charles Back was an early pioneer in the Swartland, founding Spice Route there in 1998 after tasting an exceptional Sauvignon Blanc and immediately buying the land on which it grew. “Without [Charles]…the Swartland would still be regarded as a rural backwater”, wrote Tim Atkin MW, who awarded the winery ‘Cru Bourgeois’ status in his South Africa Classification in 2019. Today, the Swartland is the source of many of South Africa’s outstanding wines, and Spice Route remains one of its best and most credible producers. This is largely because they own all their own vineyards, driven by a belief that that producing exceptional wine begins in the vines. Their vineyard holdings are comprised of 100 hectares in Malmesbury and Darling. The former, all bush trained and planted on Malmesbury shale and red clay subsoils, give the fruit grown there an intensity that makes this region so exciting.

To find out more about the vineyard click here to go to the website

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Spice Route Swartland Pinotage