Mellasat White Pinotage 2012

Vintage 2011 - Decanter World Wine Awards 2013: Commended Award.
Vintage 2010 - Decanter World Wine Awards 2011: Commended Award.

Platter’s South African Wine Guide: 3 ½ *
Pinotage vinified as a white wine, with unexpected structure & depth of flavour. Brisk acidity is evident in this interesting example.

The world’s first White Pinotage. “The paradox of this wine is that the eye belies the other senses! Making white wine from red grapes using South Africa’s unique Pinotage grape. Whole bunch pressing prevented the juice from obtaining colour from the skins. Barrel fermented and matured for eleven months with lees stirring gives this wine a slightly creamy, nutty character to balance the tropical fruit and banana flavours.”

100% Pinotage

Strong flavoured fish & seafood. Mild curries (Bobotie/Chicken Korma). Chinese/Asian food.

On the farm Dekkersvlei in Klein Drakenstein near Paarl at 254 meters above sea level.

The grapes were whole bunched pressed (i.e. without de-stemming or crushing) in a pneumatic “bag” press to minimise colour retention. Extended juice settlement for 3 days using a settling enzyme and bentonoite removes any blush the juice may have retained. The juice (by then a coral colour) was then transferred to 300li Romanian oak barrels (11% new wood). Batch 2 received an acidification adjustment using tartaric acid to correct pH. Yeast (Laffort VL2) was inoculated then fermented for approximately 12 days at an average temperature of 18˚C. Fermentation caused any remaining “tinting” in colour to drop out. Malolactic fermentation was only partially encouraged in barrel after the alcoholic fermentation and the lees stirred for six months on a weekly basis

.The length of time for barrel fermentation and barrel maturation was eleven months.

Protein stabilisation was undertaken using bentonite and a gentle fining was finally done to clarify the wine prior to bottling. No filtering of the wine was undertaken except at bottling when a medium filtration (split AF70/110) was undertaken.