Slow ripening of fruit in the vineyards due to a late summer has resulted in Franschhoek-based estate Chamonix anticipating harvest 2021 to kick-off 10 days later than average, with the Pinot Noir grapes being snipped in the first week of February. Neil Bruwer, Chamonix winemaker, says he already anticipated late onset of harvest when spring and early summer remained comfortably cool.
Top image caption: Johan Gerber
Johan Gerber has been appointed head manager at Org de Rac, the organic wine farm situated in the Swartland outside Piketberg which was founded by the late Nico Bacon in 2000. Gerber, who since 2016 was Production Manager and later winemaking manager at Origin Wine, has vast working experience at wineries in South Africa, as well as in California and Australia.
The latest release of the Chamonix Estate White Wine, made from Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon growing on this Franschhoek estate’s mountain vineyards represents an outstanding Cape white wine vintage, namely 2018 when the region was at the end of its crippling four-year drought. According to Niel Bruwer, Chamonix’s winemaker, the quality of the wines emerging from the 2018 vintage is testimony to the resilience of the vine as well its ability to produce extraordinary quality fruit under trying natural conditions.
Top image: Diemersdal team at Veritas. From left are Thys Louw, Mari Branders and Juandré Bruwer with Christo Pienaar, Veritas chairman.
Diemersdal Estate in Durbanville can record 2020 as its most successful year in the pursuing of wine accolades. The estate, which has been in the Louw family for six generations, ended the 2020 awards season with two Double Gold medals at the annual Veritas Wine Awards, South Africa’s most authoritative and most competitive wine competition. The medals were awarded to Diemersdal Winter Ferment Sauvignon Blanc 2020 and the estate’s Pinotage 2018, a wine in its premium The Journal range which was launched earlier this year.
The rich and diverse indigenous fynbos of South Africa’s winelands has become a welcome ally to the region’s wine farmers, providing natural eco-systems between and alongside vineyards where the fynbos plants act as a natural pest controller, energising soil and creating a hardy crop-cover that helps retain moisture in the soil.
The most famous wine in the world is honoured on Friday, 23 October this year when World Champagne Day is celebrated on all four corners of the globe. There can be no doubt with its celebratory cork-popping, zesty bubbly composition and delicious freshness, Champagne is the most well-known and most celebrated wine style in the world.
