Vineyard Selection Chenin Blanc 2021

• 75cl bottle

Layers of naartjíes, apricots and cling peaches with hints of flint and fynbos. Delicate oak flavours finishes the wine beautifully. This wine can be enjoyed now, but with careful cellaring it should age gracefully over the next 10 years.

Vineyards

The grapes for this wine came from a couple of old (average age: 30 years) Chenin Blanc vineyards around Stellenbosch. Careful canopy management was done to ensure enough sunlight, but protected the grapes against direct sunlight. The average yield of these wonderful old vineyard was 4t/ha.

Vintage

Kleine Zalze concluded the 2021 harvest by mid-April. The wine is all safely in the winery and we are very happy with the vintage and extremely excited at this early stage about the exceptional wines that will flow from the 2021 crop. Excellent winter rains and late rains into spring ensured good moisture content in the soil with the onset of the growing season. The prolonged cool spring weather meant that bud burst was about two weeks later than normal and slightly uneven. The subsequent moderate to cool weather during flowering and berry set continued into the rest of the growing season. The much cooler than normal growing season meant that we started harvest two weeks later than normal. The cool weather also persisted through the harvest period leading to not only exceptional acidity in the grapes and wine but the best acid balance ever seen in our grapes and wine. The harvest was briefly interrupted by a fairly large rain event, of nearly 60mm, early in March. This was initially a cause for some concern. However, moderate and dry weather following the rain actually ensured a long healthy ripening for our grapes and the late ripening varieties, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, reached physiological ripeness at lower sugar levels than normal. All in all, the vintage resulted in wines that have amazing balance and finesse and what they may not have in power they will make up with great purity and elegance.

Winemaking

The grapes were handpicked early in the morning and immediately crushed into holding tanks. We gave extended (24hours) skin contact to extract all the Chenin flavours to ensure good structure in the final wine. Only the free run juice was used and settled for 1 day before inoculation with selected yeast strains. The juice was racked into barrels for fermentation. No new barrels were used to ensure that unique characters of the specific terroirs were preserved in the wine. After fermentation the wine was aged on the primary lees for another 6 months before being racked out and prepared for bottling.

Enjoy with:

• Grilled and Roasted White Meats
• Fish/Shellfish
• Salads and Picnics
• Casseroles/Stews
• Mild Creamy Cheeses
• Mature Strong Cheeses

Perfect with seafood