Starke Conde
Stellenbosch Syrah
2018

R1,980.00

R330.00 per bottle
W.O Stellenbosch

92 in stock

Deep purple-tinged colour. Concentrated dark fruit aromas with liquorice and violet and white pepper notes. The palate is rich and broad with layers of fruit and a fine-grained tannin structure.

Additional information

Weight 1.25 kg
Dimensions 7 × 7 × 26 cm

Tasting note

Deep purple-tinged colour. Concentrated dark fruit aromas with liquorice and violet and white pepper notes. The palate is rich and broad with layers of fruit and a fine-grained tannin structure.

Although this is blend of three vineyards blocks, the primary vineyard is our “block 1” an incredibly stoney vineyard that most visitors cannot believe will actually support plant life. This special vineyard gives an intense grippiness and serves as a backbone of the wine.

Winemakers comments

This wine is primarily built around a very Stoney vineyard that just seems to produce better and better quality as the vines age. Typically of our vineyards, it makes an elegant, floral wine rather than a big in-your-face style.

Vinification and Oaking

 This is a blend from three different vineyard blocks at different elevations on our Jonkershoek Valley farm. The higher elevation vineyards have a finely textured decomposed granite soil and tend to produce a more elegant wine with softer tannins, while the lower vineyards is very rocky and gives a denser, fruitier, more tannic wine.  The grapes for this wine were hand-harvested in late February and crushed into small open fermentation vats. The natural yeast fermentation. About 10% of the wine was whole-bunched fermented with its stems. Fermented in small open-top tanks with natural fermentation. We also co-fermented small lots of Roussanne and Viognier. The Roussanne adds a  very finely textured tannin to the Viognier elegant floral notes. Regular, vigorous punchdowns were given every 4 hours for the first half of fermentation, then every 8 hours thereafter. At dryness (average 7-10 days), it was racked directly to barrel for malo-lactic fermentation and subsequent barrel maturation.

A mix of coopers were used, all French oak, all 300 litre, mostly 2nd, 3rd, and 4th– fill (about 10% new) after 20 months barrel maturation the wine was bottled with no fining and filtration.

Previous Vintages

2015: Six-nations Trophy for Blended WhIte

2017: Platter 5-star

2018: Decanter Gold, 95 pts.

2019: 91 pts, Tim Atkin SA Report 2020

Technical Analysis

Varietal: 98% Syrah. 1% Roussanne, 1% Viognier

Rootstock: Richter 110,99

Fruit source: from our own Oude Nektar farm in Jonkershoek Valley

Yield: 6.5 tons/hectare

B at harvest: 24-25

Alcohol: 14.0%

Total Acid: 5.6

Residual sugar: 2.2

Total extract: 27.8 g/L

Age of vines: 22 years average at harvest

Trellis: 5-wire vsp

Irrigation: drip irrigation

Vineyard elevation: 240 &310m

Slope: South West

Total production: 16, 605 bottles

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Stellenbosch Syrah
2018”

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