Wine Composition
100% Syrah
Winemakers Comments
Deep, purple core. Rich, berry fruit nose with lots of ripe, red plum and whiffs of white pepper. Some floral notes in the background, including violets, lavender and spring blossoms. Full in the mouth with tremendous youthful vigour. Layers of berry fruit with developing spices of pepper, cinnamon, clove, and vanilla. Gentle oak integration shows and supports the elegance and roundness at this early age.
Previous Awards
TA | 93 (Tim Atkin)
NM | 87 (Neal Martin for Robert Parker's Wine Advocate 2016)
JP | 4 Stars (John Platter's Wine Guide 2018)
Technical Analysis
Alcohol Percentage
14%
Total Acidity
4.7 g/l
pH
3.62
RS
1.76 g/l
Cellar Techniques
The Syrah was manually harvested and destalked into stainless steel fermentation tanks. A small percentage of bunches were fermented without destalking. Natural fermentation followed with a slight extended maceration on the skins to stabilize the colour and give the wine palate length. Fermentation temperatures were managed between 22°C and 27°C with a combination of punch downs and gentle pump-overs to extract colour and flavour from the skins. After fermentation, the wine was pressed off the skins and malolactic fermentation was completed in barrel. The wine spent a further 12 months in small French oak barrels, 3000L Fourdré barrels and cement tanks (total 10% new wood).
Winemaker
Name - Carl van der Merwe
Winery
DeMorgenzon, ‘the morning sun,’ was so named as it is the first part of the Stellenboschkloof valley to see the sun because of its high altitude and aspects. We cover the top southern and eastern slopes of Ribbokkop, overlooking the pinnacle of Kanonkop from where a cannon was fired to alert the farms in the region that a ship had put into Table Bay. The first road from Cape Town to Stellenbosch ran through the Stellenbosch Kloof.
In 2003 Wendy and Hylton Appelbaum bought DeMorgenzon and have since transformed DeMorgenzon into a 224-acre garden vineyard, where abundant wildflowers grow between the vines.
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