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Radford Dale Renaissance Chenin Blanc (2019)

Chenin Blanc

kr309

Sold in case of 6 x 750ml

42 in stock

Description

Aromatics of flowers, dried herbs, citrus and peach. The palate has good fruit expression, nicely integrated acidity and ever so slight phenolic grip to the finish. This has plenty of verve while simultaneously having layers of flavour and is certainly not underdone. Alc: 11.5 % pH: 3.29 TA: 6.1g/L RS: 2.0 g/L

In the vineyard

The fruit for this wine is grown in a single block of old, unirrigated bush vine Chenin on the foot slopes of the Helderberg Mountain, facing South East across False Bay. These vines grow high on a steep slope in slightly decomposed granite soils with patches of pure quartz near the top. These gnarled, old vines never yield a big crop (35hL/Ha or 5t/Ha), but because of this, the berries and bunches are small and the fruit is wonderfully concentrated. In 2019, Over the winter, rainfall figures came close to the long-term average for Stellenbosch, which came as a relief to many.

In the cellar

Some of the grapes were whole bunch pressed, some skin macerated and the free-run juice was settled for two days before being poured into barrel. Alcoholic fermentation was carried out entirely in old oak barrel (using only natural ambient yeast) for 8 – 10 weeks under cool conditions (fermentation peaking at about 18°). Malolactic fermentation was inhibited by the cold. The wine was kept on its primary lees throughout maturation, racked out of barrel after about 9 months, assembled and then settled for a month

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