Fanus and Martin do three different harvestings out of each vineyard. “We taste the grapes rather than look at the technical analysis of the must.” They explain. ‘The first pick is done when the grapes are just ripe and have the taste of sour figs. That brings freshness and acidity into the wine . The middle pick (about ten days later) is done when ripe figs, peach and grassiness is tasted in the grapes This is for the tropical fruit spectrum of the wine. The last picking is normally harvested at 24 degrees balling (if they are lucky to be able to do a later harvesting).” “ At this stage of ripeness, we are not the only ones after the grapes!” Fanus explains. “ Birds just love ripe Sauvignon blanc and help themselves daily. A spell of rain from the Indian Ocean, which is normal this time of the year, can set rot in motion as well. So it’s the tricky situation of getting it in as ripe as possible before the birds or the rain gets to it.”

 

Martin and Fanus flavour mapping the vineyard

Harvesting early in the morning
All picking is done by hand very early in the morning for freshness. The grapes are cooled down in little lug boxes to 6 degrees centigrade before being crushed. Skin maceration of about 7 hours is given at these low temperatures before the juice and skins are separated and the skins pressed in ‘Old Bessie’. “When we cannot turn her down by human strength anymore, it is exactly the right pressure before harsh phenols get released from the skins into the wine’. The juice is then settled for 48 hours and clean juice racked from the lees. Cultivated yeasts are then added to the juice and fermentation slowly gets underway, at low temperatures.

We can really put ‘handcrafted’on our labels, because just about everything is done by hand’ Fanus states. ‘We still turn our vintage basket press down by hand. ‘Old Bessie’, as she is fondly called after a classmate of mine with the same girth, still squeaks and groans (the press) every harvest time to give us just the best first pressing. We started off making wine in my garage and can really claim to be true ‘garagistes’ and ended up making over a 1000 cases of twelve bottles in 36 square meters! Last year we extended the cellar and it means that I can actually walk between tanks and not having to climb over them!”Since 2006 we have installed stainless steel static drainers to handle the juice with total freeflow and gentler handling to capture even more fruit in the wine.


Old Bessie being pressed down


Pressed Sauvignon blanc skins

After fermentation the wine is kept in the same tank for two months at 8 degrees centigrade at low sulphur levels for yeast autolysis. This process let the yeast cells break up and let all the flavours they extracted during fermentation released back into the wine. The low temperature is to keep any live yeast cells inactive and as a preservative measure for the wine. Therefore the low sulphur levels.

The wine settles here naturally clear because of the cold stable conditions. With the Full Moon at Easter, which is normally six weeks after the last wine finished fermenting, we taste the wine to decide what we are going to use in the big blend. With Full Moon all the flavours on the nose is much more pronounced, because the moon “pulls” the flavour out of the wine.This gives us a sneak preview of what’s to come in the bottle with age. . Wine also tends to be more murky, or less collaidal stable at these times. With the New Moon after Easter ( 17 days later) the wines are then racked off their thick lees because that is when they are at its most collaidal stable again. The lees are most compact at this stage and the wine can be racked very cleanly which means less filtration before bottling.

The final blend is made up out of all the different harvest tanks. The blend is then protein stabilized, tartrate stabilized and bottled.
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