#329 Olifantsberg Pinotage 2020

TASTING NOTES

👃🏼 A complex, albeit slightly reticent nose of red liquorice, cured meat, pomegranate, cherry, and some lavender.
👄 The palate is super silky upfront, but the satin gives way to a slow-rise acidity that brims with sour cherry, raspberry tartness, and sweeter cherry candy elements.
But despite the flavour notes above, this wine is not a tutti-fruiti affair. There is a lovely seam of salinity which flows through it all, giving the wine a definite sense of gravitas. 

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Things you might not know about Olifantsberg


I have spent quite a lot of time talking about Olifantsberg, so we don’t need to repeat that. In fact, I’ve left links to three videos at the bottom of this page, that talk more about what they stand for.

But there are perhaps three little highlights that are worth mentioning here and now:

  1. Winemaker Elisme Visser is really more than just a winemaker. She is – in fact – one of the few passionate vignerons in South Africa, who has managed to carve out the the time and focus that is necessary to oversee all of Olifantsberg’s viticulture herself. Obviously she also oversees the winemaking as well.

  2. Elisme’s husband, Ferdi Visser, is an award-winning winemaker in his own right, and when he joined the team in 2021, he brought with him his own delightfully geeky, details-oriented influence to their processes. The combination of their two different temperaments makes Olifanstberg an absolute must for wine lovers who geek out on winemaking details, but can still appreciate wines that taste classic in the glass.

  3. Olifantsberg make some great Chenin Blancs, as well as some highly recommended lighter styled Grenaches, Syrah and Pinotages, BUT Olifantsberg’s real USP is the estate’s rather spectacular parcels of Roussanne vineyards, which not only form the backbone of their white blend (the Matriarch), but which produce a 100% Roussanne bottling as well.

Obviously, If you have yet to sign up for your Monthly HanDrinksSolo Wine Subscription then you’ll have to hunt this wine down in your own time to get a more complete sense of why we’re hyped. But until then, here are my tasting notes and some technical specs:

TECHNICAL SPECS

🔬 Wine of Origin Breedekloof. Vineyards were planted in 2005 into a duplex soil of Sandstone and Clay shales, at 300m ASL. The rootstock employed was Paulsen. The slope faces southwest, and in the 2020 vintage yielded roughly XXX.

The wine was fermented in XXX, and then matured in
| Total Production: 1254 bottles | Alc 13.10% | RS 2.49g/l | pH 3.7 | TA 5.7g/l |
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Three Olifantsberg Wine  + Three Olifantsberg Videos.

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#183 Olifantsberg Old Vine Chenin Blanc

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#164 Olifantsberg Blanc White Blend

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