Producer
The Elgin Vintners are a partnership of six dedicated grape growers who, believing in the excellence of the terroir and diversity of their vineyards, have combined their resources to cultivate and produce a range of high quality wines. They hail from the beautiful Elgin Valley, a high inland plateau completely surrounded by mountains, seventy kilometres along the coast from Cape Town. This cool climate region was long known for its apple orchards but since the turn of the century quality conscious winemakers have been taking advantage of the temperate conditions, afforded by the high altitudes and cooling winds from the Atlantic, to grow exemplary Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir.
Vineyard
The grapes come from the Pine Tree Vineyard, planted in 2002 on a mixture of Tukulu, Koffie Klip and Table Mountain Sand Stone, on a north west facing slope. Green harvesting is employed prior to veraison and the vines are trained to double perold. The grapes were hand picked in three stages into eighteen kilo boxes.
Winery
The grapes were de-stemmed into a mixture of open top fermenters and closed stainless steel tanks, where they underwent a four day maceration, prior to fermentation. Fermentation lasted eighteen days, during which the proportion in open top fermenters were given frequent punch downs and the closed proportion received regular pumpovers. The wine was then gently pressed to French oak barriques, where malolactic fermentation took place and the wine was aged on its fine lees for a further ten months.
