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Craven Wines began with a few barrels of Pinot Noir off Jeanine Craven’s family farm. That is where the entire project started. Then they dropped Pinot Noir from the Craven range altogether — and Ann Faure is them coming back to it, under a new name.

The name is a triple. Ann and Faure are the middle names of their two children. Said aloud, it sounds like amphora. And Faure is a real ward in southern Stellenbosch, where Jeanine’s family farm sits. Their kids, a joke about vessels, and the place it all began, in two words.

Here is the kicker. In 2024 Craven phased oak out completely and moved to concrete. So the wine that sounds like amphora contains no amphora at all: eight months at roughly 80% stainless steel and 20% concrete. Twelve percent alcohol, nine days on skins, native yeast, whole berries off sixteen-year-old vines on decomposed granite in Stellenbosch Kloof, cooled by False Bay.

Mick Craven is Australian, Jeanine South African. They met as cellar hands on a Sonoma harvest in 2007, worked four years of vintages around the world, and settled in Stellenbosch in the early 2010s. They own no vineyards at all — they lease and contract single sites, and have worked exclusively with organic growers since 2019.

But of course, 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. But until then, here are my tasting notes and some technical specs:

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100% Pinot Noir from sixteen-year-old vines on decomposed granite in Stellenbosch Kloof. Nine days on skins, native yeast, whole berries — the fruit is destemmed, so whole berry rather than whole bunch — then eight months at roughly 80% stainless steel and 20% concrete. No oak: Craven phased it out entirely in 2024.
Alc. 12% | Acid 5.8 g/L | Sulfur (total) 50 mg/L | The importer’s sheet lists a pH that is plainly a typo, so it stays out until the producer confirms it.