Winemaker Notes
The luminous, viscous and bright golden colour reflects beautifully in the light as you swirl your glass, highlighting the well-balanced acidity of this vintage of our Mullineux Straw Wine. This Granitic freshness is reminiscent of wines grown in these ancient Swartland soils. The palate reveals complex layers of sun-dried apricots, limes and a distinct pithiness, all characters culminating from the rich Schist soils of Kasteelberg, which in turn develop into an enticing Meebos-like salinity and intense velvety mouth feel
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This has a golden color showing delicious aromas of tangerines, dried apricots, figs and marmalade. Beautifully honeyed and sweet, pure, balanced by concentrated acidity, all about the yellow and orange fruit. Made from chenin blanc dried in the shade for three to four weeks.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Literally meaning "the black land," Swartland takes its name from the endangered, indigenous "renosterbos" (translating to rhino bush), which used to be plentiful enough to turn the entire landscape a dark color certain during times of year. The district, attracting some of the most adventurous and least interventionist winemakers, excels in robust and full-bodied reds as well as quality fortified wines.