Wine Composition
56% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Malbec & 19% Cabernet Franc
Winemakers Comments
The 2020 vintage of Book XVII most certainly paid off, delivering grapes of the highest quality with excellent flavor, great depth, balance and concentration. Overall, the 2020 vintage is characterized by being more dark fruit-driven with big structured pallets, encapsulating immense complexity and intensity. The Book XVII 2020 vintage closely resembles the 2015 vintage. There is a bouquet of dark, perfumed blackberries, plum, vanilla, and a hint of sweet oak spice on the nose. This wine delights with a dense yet vibrant palate and exceptional flavors of blueberries, and freshly ripened black current. As one has come to expect, this wine has a delicate acidity that holds all its components in perfect harmony, as well as fine, polished, almost mineral tannins.
Awards
Wine Enthusiast | 94 points (2017)
Technical Analysis
Alcohol Percentage
15.15%
TA
5.4 g/l
ph
3.59
RS
2.7 g/l
Vinification
Aged in a climatized barrel/ maturation room (14 degrees Celsius at 80% humidity) for 22 months in 225 Litre 100% new French Oak barrels.
Winemaker
Name: Martin Fourie
Winery
The truth is in the vine. The guiding philosophy that elevated this boutique estate into one of South Africa’s most respected premium wine producers. De Toren began with a view. Enchanted by the estate’s panoramic vistas stretching from the Helderberg, over False Bay and across to Table Mountain and recognising the untapped potential of this unique site, the foundation for De Toren’s innovative approach to crafting world-class Bordeaux-style wines, was laid. Working closely with academics from the Stellenbosch University, an extensive soil analysis of the property embarked. A dozen sampling holes were dug on each hectare of the farm, treble the wine industry’s standard practice. Across the estate’s 25 hectares, 15 separate soil types were identified and ultimately 25 clones across the five classic Bordeaux varieties were planted. Here this philosophy of craftsmanship and exceptional care was born and was applied to everything we have done ever since.De Toren believes that complexity can be found through design. The estate’s vineyards were designed from the ground up to produce world-class wines and enormous attention was given to where and how each vineyard was planted. The design of our iconic Left- and Right-Bordeaux styled blends were planned and decided upon after which the vines were planted to match the make-up of these wines. Crafting a blended wine is like painting, with each texture, aroma and flavour being a different colour. The De Toren palette is made up of a selection of soils, rootstocks, vines, cultivars and barrels. We utilised 25 different clones across the five noble Bordeaux varieties which includes Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot which were matched to 10 different rootstocks, before being planted across fifteen different soil types. Each variety, clone and rootstock were matched to the optimal soil type to gain as much complexity from the vineyard as possible.
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