Description
Patatsfontein ‘Sons of Sugarland’ Stellenbosch Syrah 2019
Shattered Quartz & Volcanic material over Siltstone, Sandstone & Clay.
This area is approximately half one hectare in size. Quartz’ is from the original plantings in 1988.
The winemaking is the same for both wines however the Quartz Chardonnay sometimes spends a few months longer in barrel and there is a higher percentage of new wood used, being around 35%.
One grape…one clone…one vineyard…one immensely explosive Syrah that is truly a Syrah for Syrah lovers. The SH99 Syrah clone from the ‘Karibib Vineyard’ in the Polkadraai Hills in addition to a bit of sulfur is all that makes up this sublime wine. Reenen shares the 11 rows of Syrah with Lukas Van Loggerenberg (for his ‘Graft’ Syrah) as well as Jean Smit’s Damascene wines. This is the highest parcel of this ocean-facing vineyard that gets rammed by the cool breezes. 2019 was a vintage of upmost complexity and elegance and a change of pace in many ways from the previous four. This is also the second vintage for this wine to be 100% from Karibib as the 2015-2017 saw a bit of Boschkloof Syrah brought into the fold. Reenen’s goal with this wine is to make it as raw as possible and have a bit of shock value. In a very short time this has risen to Syrah royalty in South Africa alongside Reenen’s ‘Epilogue’.
The fruit was hand-harvested in one morning and brought back to the winery where the fruit was placed into an open top stainless steel fermenter. Fermentation kicked off naturally after three days of sitting on the skins and stems. Once the fermentation went dry it the wine sat on the skins for an additional 20 days post-fermentation. The lot was pressed to a 15hL concrete egg with gross lees intact and left to age for 12 months. It was bottled without fining or filtration and just a small addition of sulfur.
