Syrah

Serve with a lamb burger and sweet potato fries.

Agriculture in the Upper Blaauwklippen Valley can be traced back to 1694. In 2003 the Wraith family moved to the Western Cape from Gauteng and bought two adjacent farms. These two farms are now farmed as one Estate known as Keermont Vineyards. 2005 saw the start of a major vineyard planting programme on lands that had been fallow for a number of years. We planted 21Ha over seven years to add to an existing 8Ha of older vineyards. Our official maiden vintage was 2007 and in 2010 a spring water bottling plant on Fleurfontein was converted into a fully functional winery complete with offices tasting room processing facilities and barrel rooms.

Despite prevailing drought conditions, 2018 was a very good growing season on Keermont. We had a fairly cold winter although it was drier than usual. Spring arrived quite early and the warm weather ensured an even budburst. We had some good rain showers during the season which allowed for the vines to grow sufficiently. These factors led to the formation of a healthy crop which ripened evenly. We had very notable diurnal temperature variation during this season (warm days and cool nights) which is responsible for good tannin, colour, and flavour development. Harvest started at the beginning of February and ran very smoothly. We processed 87 tons (13 varieties) in the Keermont winery over the period of seven weeks.

This wine spent 20 months maturing in seasoned 500 and 225 litre French oak barrels before being bottled by hand on 27 November 2019.

All grapes used in producing our wines are grown on Keermont Vineyards. Small parcels of grapes are specifically selected according to ripeness, harvested by hand, and vinified separately. This process is carried out gently and naturally in open top fermenters using traditional methods only.