Ou Kalant Cabernet Sauvignon

Beef, Lamb, Poultry

As budding young winemakers back in 2001, we sometimes struggled to find decent wines we could afford. My brother Philip and I were involved with our family winery (Joostenberg Wines) and José was busy at his (Stark-Condé Wines).We weren’t looking for rockstar bottles that cost a fortune. But we had pretty high standards (in our own opinion) and wanted wines we could enjoy with our friends, most of whom were also in the wine industry. We were wine geeks in need of an everyday wine. We saw a niche in the market and got to work but first had to come up with a name for this new project. To keep peace in the families, we took our wives’ initials (we each have one wife!) — and that is how we explained to Marie, Anette and Nicky that we were going to be “busy” most weekends. “It’s for you!” we told them. We immediately got to work in an old tractor shed and that first year, we made a total of 600 cases of Pinotage. – Tyrrel Myburgh, co-founder

The 2022 vintage had excellent growing conditions. Overall, the conditions were favourable for colour and aroma preservation in red wines. The grapes are aromatic and balanced, with deep colour, pronounced fruit expression and soft tannins. This was a very high quality vintage with strong wines across the board. Grapes are primarily from dry-farmed vineyards in the Agter-Paarl area. Malmesbury Shale soils have excellent water retention and produce flavourful grapes with small berries. Additional components from the cooler Stellenbosch region are used to add structure and complexity.

5% of the wine was matured in new 225L American oak barrels, with an additional 20% of the wine matured in older barrels. Barrel maturation of 12 months total. Fined and filtered before bottling.

Grapes were hand-harvested and given a 2-day cold maceration. Fermentation took place over 5 days in stainless steel tanks with regular pump-overs. Before the end of fermentation, the grapes were pressed and put back into tank for malolactic fermentation.