Radford Dale Vinum Pinot Noir 2022

Medium ruby, with a crimson rim.  Strawberry and black cherry with subtle clove notes that typify the variety. Engaging notes of fresh berries and dark plums add immediate appeal. The medium palate shines with a satin texture and beautifully refined tannin, leading to a long, tapering finish, leaving pleasant echoes of raspberry and plums on the palate.

This wine sees us working with three Pinot Noir vineyards, on either side of our usual stomping ground in Elgin. From sites in Stellenbosch & Botriver, we have a fleshier expression of Cape Pinot, showing hints of a welcome darker fruit character. We’re excited to see how this wine unfolds, and how our relationship with these two sites evolve. The mature Stellenbosch vineyards are east-facing with deep and clay-rich Clovelly and rocky, free-draining granite soils. This vineyard is picked earlier to retain the acidity and balance. The Botriver vineyards are 16 years old, north facing, consisting of Burgundian clone 115, planted in koffieklip soils. Good rainfall in the winter of 2021 ensured excellent growing vigour, but strong winds during November and December meant a similar harvest to 2020 (low yielding).

The berries were co-fermented, using natural ferments. We made use of our hoist system in the cellar, which enabled us to lift the whole berries into the tanks and use gravity to place them in un-crushed and carry out 100% whole-berry fermentation. We employed gentle extraction, with the berries gently basket pressed subsequently for pure and fine tannins.

The resulting wine was then matured in a combination of 228L and 300L barrels of Burgundian origin, a very small number of which were new. As with all our wines, we used minimal SO2 and this wine was not fined.