Fairview La Beryl Blanc 2010 Wine

La Beryl Blanc is a traditional straw wine or vin de paille style dessert wine. The grapes are allowed to dry on straw mats prior to fermentation, raising the sugar levels and intensifying the flavours. This wine is named to honour my late mother, Beryl Back.Charles Back

IN THE VINEYARD:

The wine was produced exclusively using Chenin Blanc grapes from the Fairview farm. This bushvine vineyard is 33 years old and is grown on decomposed granite soils, and irrigated only when necessary.

HARVEST DATES:

Fruit was harvested by hand over a 3 day period, from 18 to 20 February 2010. The reason for this is that the bunches are individually picked when they are perfectly ripe, and therefore the vineyard is passed through a number of times until all the grapes have been brought in. It is also a very labour intensive harvesting process, as each bunch has any damaged or imperfect berries removed carefully, while in the vineyard.

WINEMAKING:

The harvesting was done extremely carefully so as not to damage any fruit. The grapes were harvested at approximately 22°B. Picked into small lug boxes, the grapes were transported to a well ventilated shed where they were carefully laid out on racks lined with straw to dry. It took about four weeks for the grapes to dry to a 'raisined' state, losing up to 75 of their moisture. They were then pressed and allowed to ferment in stainless steel tanks. Fermentation lasted six months, before the wine was filtered and bottled.

Wine of OriginPaarl

Alcohol14%

Residual sugar140 g/l

Total acid8.4 g/l

pH3.55