Durbanville Hills Collectors Reserve The Promenade Pinotage

Description

Durbanville Hills Collectors Reserve The Promenade Pinotage is part of a new premium wines made with grapes grown around the town of Durbanville in the Western Cape. It is bottled as a Wine of Origin Durbanville. This range of wines is inspired by Cape Town’s radiant energy and creative demeanour and the labels feature artwork by Capetonian artist Theo Vorster.

Durbanville Hills wines is a small collection of growers, a small co-operative really, with a centralised winery. The collective was originally formed in the late 1990s when a group of seven local grape farmers made an agreement with Distell (one of South Africa’s largest wine companies and owners of other Plaisir de Merle, Nederburg et al.) that Distell would build a new cellar to make wine their 7 farms. The Durbanville Hills cellars are located some 20 minutes from Cape Town’s city centre and overlooks Table Mountain, Table Bay and Robben Island. This is an ultramodern facility that can compare with the world’s best. The cool climate region, the best grapes and modern winemaking produce excellent quality wines. Distell was acquied by Heineken Beverages in 2023.

Today there are 9 growers, whose vineyards are all located closed to the cellars. The nine member farms are Klein Roosboom, Ongegund, Hillcrest, Maastricht, Morgenster, Bloemendal and Hooggelegen. Another two producers from the farms Welbeloond and De Grendel recently joined the cellar. Vineyards in the regions date back to the late 17th century, the Klein Roosboom farm was established in 1714 for example.

The grapes for the Durbanville Hills Collectors Reserve The Promenade Pinotage is made from 100% Pinotage grapes sourced from a  17-year-old vineyard on the open Westerly side of the valley. The block faces to the West, exposing it to the afternoon sun and the soils here are fairly deep and of the yellow Clovelly and red Hutton forms.

The Pinotage grapes are handpicked and are destemmed over a sorting table and sent to 15 ton fermenters. The wine is fermented with regular pumping overs, in combination with compressed air, to extract maximum fruit, colour and tannin. The wine was then matured in a combination new and second fill, tight grained medium toasted French oak barrels for 14 months

Winemakers are Martin Moore and Wilhelm Coetzee.