Circle of Life Red 2023

Waterkloof, teknisk ark/fact sheet (waterkloofwines.co.za – linket fra waterkloofwines.co.za, hentet 2026-10-18): 2023 Waterkloof Circle of Life Red; 84% Mourvèdre, 9% Syrah, 7% Grenache; alkohol 12.5%. Producentens noter (engelsk): Fact sheet: IT’S REALLY ALL ABOUT THE VINEYARDS Circle of Life tells the story of Waterkloof: A once conventionally farmed vineyard with great potential, that - since Paul Boutinot took over the property - has been transformed into a living, breathing regenerative vineyard by Farm Manager Christiaan Loots and his team. At Waterkloof we strive to produce balanced, characterful wines by adhering to traditional regenerative methods. Our soils are kept healthy by using plant extracts, fungi and bacteria from our own organic compost. We do not fight nature, we harness it. Our focus has always been to get a better understanding of Waterkloof and the individual characters of its vineyard blocks. The Circumstance range allows these individual blocks and varietals to be expressed. Conversely, our objective with Circle of Life has been to produce two blends that encapsulate all the varying terroir characteristics and grape varietals found on Waterkloof-they are a true reflection of the totality, philosophy and specificity of Waterkloof. A GENTLE HAND We harvest according to taste and find it essential to spend most of our time in the vineyards to see how the flavours develop. Bunches are hand-picked early in the mornings, when they are still cool, which helps to preserve the flavours. To ensure that only the best berries are used, we sorted all grapes by hand in the winery as well. The whole bunches were placed into our wooden fermenters via our gravitational system. The fermentation started naturally with yeast present on the grapes to enhance the flavours prevailing in the vineyards. We also don’t add any sulphur at this point. Just pure grapes in our wooden fermenters. Throughout the fermentation process, we did soft punch downs twice a day to gently and slowly extract the tannins. The wines spent around 21-25 days on the skins, during which time the tannins were able to soften. This duration is dependent on taste. After the maceration time on the skins, we ran the wine down via gravity – still no pumping. The grape skins also fell through into the basket press and were softly pressed to gently extract the last bit of wine, aroma and colour from the skins. The varietals were aged separately in 600L French oak barrels. Only 5 % were new barrels, to avoid dominance of wood aromatics in our wines. […]