Vergenoegd Newsletter - December 2013

Sunday, 1 December, 2013
Nannie de Villiers Nieuwoudt
Wow, I can't believe that we are approaching the close of another year. This year has certainly been challenging, starting with the harvest and then continuing this trend with the weather but as they say - what does not break you, builds character ... We at Vergenoegd, like our wines, have the structure to carry this character.
On the wine front, we are getting ready to bottle the next vintage of Runner Duck Red (2012), a full two months earlier than usual, because the current vintage is sold out. This involves a great amount of planning: ordering of bottles and closures (and checking that they are delivered), booking a date for the mobile bottling unit, making space in the cellar for the newly bottled wine, getting labels ready... If you forget one little thing it can have a knock on effect and cause a small catastrophe, this increases our stress levels. However once the wine is in the bottle, there is an immense sense of relief and the obvious sense of "satisfaction has been achieved"!

The rest of the wines for our classic range are still ageing in 300 litre barrels. We will be bottling these just before the 2014 harvest. We are now in the process of evaluating these wines. The first step is to taste each barrel in the cellar. We rate each barrel and provisionally allocate each into the range and label we think they best fit. The first wine we concentrate on is the Estate Blend. Here we are looking to put together a wine that best expresses the terroir of Vergenoegd. We look for barrels where the wood has allowed for maximum fruit expression, rather than dominance.

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