Known as one of the coolest vineyard sites in Elgin, located as it is on the high-lying and appropriately named Highlands Road, Iona Vineyards is ideal for the production of award winning Pinot Noir. It was the first grape variety which owner Andrew Gunn planted after acquiring the property in 1997.
Consistency in our vineyards used to be a bit problematic,
said Iona winemaker Werner Muller. They were up and down – but then they just settled down after hitting 15 or 16 years!
He likened it to a teenager making the transition from the awkward ‘skinny jeans’ phase to realising that being grown up means adopting your own identity and caring less about what others think of your clothes or fashion sense.
The quietly spoken but nonetheless intense cellar chief has made wine here since 2011 and has had time to learn both the vineyards and their soils intimately but also the prevailing climate and vintage conditions. That coolness is not always an advantage,
he cautioned, referencing 2014 as being a horrid vintage. Cold, wet and miserable,
were his words. But by working through those sorts of vintages he has a deep understanding of what works for Iona.
Our Kroon wines come from a single vineyard site – and it really is unique. It's the only south-facing vineyard on the farm! The rest are all north-facing.
Anyone au fait with homes in South Africa knows that houses are built facing north to make the most of the available sunlight and warmth. Reading between the lines, that tells its own tale of coolness at Iona.
But there are other factors that make the Kroon Pinot Noir stand out. It's the highest vineyard on the farm. The soil in this particular vineyard also differs: it's the only iron rich ferricrete patch with a clay subsoil whereas others are quartzite. It's planted to multiple Pinot Noir clones, notably PN115 and PN777.
All these factors combine to make Kroon finer – aromatically and structurally – to other Iona Pinot Noirs, Muller maintains. The winemaking is fairly standard: grapes are hand harvested into small lug boxes which then spend a night in a cool room, just chilling. Meticulous hand sorting of bunches occurs before destemming but Muller makes a point of stating that the berries remain intact. We don't crush.
What follows is a five to seven day cold maceration of the fruit before natural fermentation happens. We punch down – gently – once or twice a day, just to wet the cap of skins,
Muller said.
Once fermentation is complete, the wine is drained off the skins and settled in tank for between three and five days so that the wine is clear before going to a mix of 300-litre and 500-litre oak barrels. And only a quarter of the barrels for the 2019 Kroon were new, the rest had all been pressed into service for a year or two previously.
We leave the wine for twelve months on the lees – we don't rack during this time,
Muller said. Then it's removed from barrel and spends a further three months in a stainless steel tank before its bottled, both unfined and unfiltered.
Muller said the Kroon vineyard, along with other Iona Pinot Noir vineyards, were now in their late teens – hence the skinny jeans comment. They have reached a level of maturity and consistency, no longer being gawky or unpredictable, he maintains. And the Kroon just stands out for the complexity that it naturally delivers, along with those fine tannins.
We've worked really hard to keep the vines in the soil. We want them to be able to remain where they are for another 30 to 40 years.
Visit the Iona Vineyards website to learn more about the award winning Iona Vineyards Kroon Pinot Noir 2019.
Original article published on www.pinotnoir.co.za.