Mellasat White Pinotage 2025

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 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.
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.