Vinum Pinot Noir

Ideal with duck and other game birds, casseroles or, of course, stews like beef bourguignon.

Founded in 1998 by Alex Dale, Radford Dale set about the Cape in search of exciting vineyard parcels for their chosen specialist varietals. Today, they have two producing wineries. The first is located in Stellenbosch, predominantly focused on sourcing maritime influenced parcels around the Helderberg and Polkadraai. Here, they produce the cult, single vineyard wines of Renaissance Chenin Blanc and Frankenstein Pinotage, and the Radford Dale Vinum range; a set of six wines that consistently overdeliver on style to price. The 2022 vintage marked the maiden release from their own vineyards purchased in Elgin under Radford Dale Organic, with the release of four single varietal Estate wines, the only organic certified vineyards in the region. More recently, they have co-founded South Africa’s first Organic Wine Association. They continue to reintroduce Gamay Noir to the Cape, establishing the first new plantings for some 20 years. It’s a varietal geared up to thrive in warm conditions, and on granite soils. Stylistically, Gamay also embodies Radford Dale’s championing of elegant, refreshing red wines.

The mature Stellenbosch vineyards are east facing with soils of deep and clay-rich Clovelly and rocky, free-draining granite. This vineyard is picked earlier to retain the acidity and balance. The Botriver vineyards are 17 years old, north facing and consisting of Burgundian clone 115, planted in koffieklip soils. Winter rainfall started well with average to above-average levels in May and June but dropped sharply from July to November. Groundwater reservoirs were still filled when budding began and vineyards were off to a good start thanks to optimal day temperatures.

The resulting wine was then matured in a combination of 228L and 300L barrels of Burgundian origin, a very small number of which were new. As with all our wines, we used minimal SO2 and this wine was not fined.

The berries were co-fermented, using natural ferments. We made use of our hoist system in the cellar, which enabled us to lift the whole berries into the tanks and use gravity to place them in uncrushed and carry out 100% whole-berry fermentation. We employed gentle extraction, with the berries gently basket pressed subsequently for pure and fine tannins.