NEIL ELLIS GROENEKLOOF SYRAH 2018

A medium bodied Shiraz with a vibrant colour. The nose has bright dark fruit with contributing spicy perfumed aromas. Savoury notes linger in the background while the palette is fresh with chalky, fine, elegant tannins.

100% Shiraz

Pork belly and braised chicken.

Sourced from low yielding bush vines on with no supplementary irrigation. The soils consist of decomposed granite and clay allowing for good physical properties like water retention.

Grapes were harvested between 24 and 26°B with a total acid of 7.2 g/l and a pH of 3.4.

Harvest commenced on the 21st of February and carried through to the 1st of March. Handpicked, crushed and fermented on skins in open top fermenters allowing punch downs and gentle pump-overs to extract colour, flavour and tannin. Malolactic fermentation in French oak puncheons.

Aged for 15 months in 5% new and the balance in older French puncheons of 500ℓ capacity.

Neil Ellis and his son Warren make a varied and excellent range of wines using fruit from four different vineyard regions: Elgin, the Jonkershoek Valley, Piekenierskloof and, the source of this wine, Groenekloof, near Darling on South Africa’s Atlantic coast. It is sourced from unirrigated, low-yielding bush vines on decomposed granite and clay soils and aged in larger, 500-litre French oak puncheons.