White · 100% Chenin Blanc (1962 vines)
Oupa Block Chenin Blanc
Vintage 2022
From the oldest block on the farm. Bush vines, dry-farmed.
Oupa Block is a single hectare of bush-vine Chenin Blanc planted by my grandfather in 1962. Dry-farmed, ungrafted, low-yielding. Fifteen rows of vines that have made wine through five droughts and three of his birthdays we don't talk about.
Hand-picked over three pickings in late February. Whole-bunch pressed straight to old 500-litre French oak, fermented with the wild yeast that lives on the skins. Aged twelve months on the gross lees, no battonage. Bottled unfined.
This is our flagship white and the wine the farm is built on. We make less than three thousand bottles a year.
Tasting notes
Yellow apple, honeycomb, wet stone, beeswax. Layered, textural, with a saline finish that goes on past the count of forty.
Technical sheet
- Alcohol
- 13.5%
- Residual sugar
- 2.4 g/L
- Total acidity
- 6.5 g/L
- pH
- 3.32
- Oak
- 12 months, 500L French oak, 0% new
- Production
- 2,900 bottles
- Ageing potential
- Drink now to 2035
- Closure
- Natural cork
What to drink it with
Roast chicken with a lot of butter. A wedge of aged Comté. Sunday lunch, basically.
What people have said
- Platter's 5-star (2023, 2024)
- Tim Atkin MW: 95 points, "South African Chenin at its most articulate"
- Winemag.co.za Top 10 Chenin Challenge, 2023
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