Natasha Williams Lelie Van Sharon Syrah 2020

Where: Upper Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, South Africa
Grapes: Syrah
Body: Full
Category: Red Wine

Seductive. From cassis & black cherries through violets & rose petals to herbs & pepper. Outstanding complexity & structure.

Despite wine never being apart of her life since it was forbidden in the house due to a Muslim mother and a father who believed wine was evil, Natasha is a winemaker to look out for. 

+92 points - Wine Advocate

In its fourth release, the DeBos Vineyard is again the source of fruit for this wine, located on the north side of the dam for which it is named at the base of the Babylonstoren Mountains. The small block that makes this wine is a south/southwest facing slope at roughly 400-550 feet in elevation with the vines planted between fields of fynbos and in very close proximity to the sea. The Syrah block sits just below the Chardonnay block and has more of a sandy, granitic soil with rocky outcrops of pure granite.

The three clones were selected based on stem ripeness, fruit quality and bunch size. The grapes were hand-harvested and placed in an open top stainless-steel tanks with roughly 40% of the bunches left intact and the rest being destemmed but not crushed, placed atop the whole-clusters. Occasional foot stomping and a few light pumpovers got the fermentation going and after two weeks the wine went dry. The wine stayed on skins for an additional week prior to being basket pressed to a single old French tonneau and demi-muid. After 12 months of aging with a small addition of sulfur in the spring, the wine was bottled with a gentle fining and coarse sheet filtration for stability.

sustainable // native yeasts // vegan // woman winemaker 

2020  //  750ml