Wine Composition
100% Syrah
Winemakers Comments
Deep, purple core. Rich, berry fruit aromas with lots of ripe, red plum and whiffs of white pepper. Some floral notes in the background, including violets, lavender, and spring blossoms. The palate displays dark fruit flavors, revealing white pepper, cinnamon, clove and vanilla spice. Gentle oak integration bodes well for a long and graceful bottle maturation of this wine.
Awards
Tim Atkins | 91 points
Technical Analysis
Alcohol Percentage
14%
Total Acidity
4.7 g/l
pH
3.69
RS
1.87 g/l
Cellar Techniques
Grapes were hand-harvested and destalked into stainless steel fermentation tanks, allowing for a small percentage of whole bunches. Spontaneous fermentation followed, with temperatures ranging between 22°C and 27°C, and the use of gentle punch-downs to extract color and tannin from the skins. With the completion of malolactic fermentation, the wine was transferred to small French oak barrels, 3000L Fourdres and cement tanks where it matured for 12 months.
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.