Vergelegen Reserve Chardonnay 2021

The wine shows an attractive lemony yellow-green colour with a complex nose of citrus, white peach, pineapple, spice, citrus blossoms, apricot and buttered toast aromas. The taste is long and elegant with a lively minerality.

ORIGIN

The grapes are all Estate grown and selected from three vineyards – Rooiland 12 & 13 and the super vineyard Lower Schaapenberg.

VINIFICATION

Grapes were whole-bunch pressed with no skin contact. The juice, with some clarification, was racked into 30% new French oak barrels (Francois Frère, Dargaud & Jaegle, St Martin) and 70% second and third-fill barrelsfor alcoholic fermentation. The spontaneous onset of fermentation was allowed for, and after 7 days the barrels were inoculated with a pure culture yeast strain. Fermentation took approximately 15 days to complete – once the sugar was fermented, all 50 barrels were topped up. Only one-third of the barrels were allowed to complete malolactic fermentation to retain optimum acidity/freshness. The young wine was left on the gross lees for 8 months with regular batonnage, then stabilized and bottled on 10th of November 2019. Release date January 2022. Total production 12300 bottles