The 2006 Cecile Pinotage has just been bottled, making The Pinotage Restaurant and Wine Cellar the first non-winery to bottle wine in Gauteng.
Just over 14 months ago, a group of intrepid wine lovers destalked and stomped their way through a ton of grapes flown in from Meerendal Estate at The Pinotage’s inaugural wine pressing festival. Initiated by Hennie and Allan, the wine pressing event is an extension of their passion for the quintessentially South African Pinotage wine.
The pressed juice lay for 14 months in two 300 litre vats made of French oak and American oak respectively, quietly transforming from grape pulp to great Pinotage. The vats were initially stored in the restaurant’s chilled wine room which holds an impressive collection of some of the finest Pinotage wines available, but were moved earlier this year into the brand-new winery purpose-built to store the wine from the annual wine pressing event.
After waiting patiently for over a year, Allan and Hennie manually siphoned the wine from both vats into 20 litre containers, and then transferred it into a fermentation tank with added potassium to prevent oxidisation. Two hours later, the wine was siphoned again into a 120 litre container and then bottled using a free-flowing bottling machine which pours exactly 750ml into three bottles simultaneously, using a system that “works in the same way as a toilet cistern” as claimed by Allan and Hennie. Fortunately there was no flushing away of the wine, only flushing of cheeks during the siphoning process!
Corks were inserted manually into each bottle and sealed by dipping the bottle top into hot wax. The labels, which had been designed by the winning wine pressing team, were applied carefully by hand. The back label of each bottle bears the names of all the proud wine pressers. The one ton of grapes generated almost 700 bottles of Cecile Pinotage, which can be purchased exclusively from The Pinotage Restaurant and Wine Cellar.
Allan and Hennie describe the Cecile Pinotage as having a deep purple plum colour, with rich red berry, hints of vanilla and slightly smoky on the nose. Flavours of banana from the American oak and undertones of ripe red berries, especially mulberries, are discernable on the palate. Meerendal’s wine guru Bennie Howard’s first impression was that the wine has a good fruit and wood balance, and will be a contender for Pinotage of choice against other well-known Pinotage wines.
On Friday 29 June 2007, the original wine ‘stompers’ were invited to the official wine tasting of the Cecile Pinotage. The cocktail function was held at the winery which now holds the wine pressed at this year’s event. This year two tons of grapes were pressed. “The Pinotage will be the only non-grape producing winery in the country to enter the prestigious ABSA Top 10 Pinotage Competition, which requires a winery to produce a minimum of 1,000 bottles to enter,” says Hennie. The Pinotage is the only restaurant in Gauteng to have an official wine maker's status, having been issued an A number (A1277) by SAWIS (South African Wine Industry Information & Systems) which allows a wine producer to bottle their own wine.