Mellasat White Pinotage 2019

The world’s first White Pinotage! Our first vintage of this wine was in 2007. “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 pineapple fruit and banana flavours.”

The grapes were harvested in 5 batches, then whole bunched pressed (i.e. without de-stemming or crushing) in a pneumatic “bag” press to minimize colour retention. Extended juice settlement for three days using a settling enzyme and bentonite removes any blush the juice may have retained. The juice (by then a coral colour) was then transferred to 300li Romanian oak barrels (12% first fill, the remaining is second fill and older barrels). Yeast (Laffort VL2) was inoculated then fermented for approximately 12 days at an average temperature of 17˚C. Fermentation caused any remaining “tinting” in colour to drop out. Malolactic fermentation occurred naturally after the alcoholic fermentation and the lees stirred for six months on a weekly basis. The length of time for barrel fermentation and 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.