Transient Lands Pinotage
Learn More About This Wine
This wine will be an ongoing project to source, blend and bottle special parcels of Pinotage across the Western Cape and become an expression of each vintage through the grape’s proverbial lens.
In 2024, the blend uses Pinotage from the granitic Polkadraai Hills above Stellenbosch and the sandy granite soils of the Paardeberg in Swartland.
Grapes are hand picked and cooled overnight. They were then fermented in open-top bins. Of the grapes, 5% were foot trodden whole bunches, and the remainder destemmed. A light sulphur addition was made at crushing.
Natural fermentation took place over 10 days after which a maceration was carried out until the tannins had developed satisfactorily (about 5 more days). After draining, the remaining grapes were pressed to old wooden barrels. A spontaneous malolactic fermentation then took place, and in early Autumn wines were sulphured for the first time. Wines were bottled in December after having spent 11 months in barrels with no racking.
This vintage shows fruit abundance and generosity. The nose is loaded with waves of red and black berries, dark cherries and star anise. The palate is equally fruit forward: round, gentle tannins are coated in a bouncing fruit abundance. The acid is fine and taught.
A reference to the fleeting custodianship of the lands we, humans, grow crops on. Though we may now ‘own’ them, and describe them as ‘lands’ – the plural being implicit of ownership – they will continue their docile existence forever, should we be there to tend them or not. Notably, despite this, and quite incredibly, we have this product like no other – wine – that allows us to taste those particular aggregates of earth we plant on.
Part of Pinotage’s increasingly exciting new wave, this combines raw material from the Swartland and the Polkadraai Hills. Lighter and less tannic than in the past, it’s what Angus Paul describes as a “project wine”, with wafts of rose petal and wild herbs, sinewy intensity and supple raspberry and red cherry fruit. Tim Atkin MW – South Africa Report 2025 – 93 points
