McFarlane Wines Tuesday's Child Cinsault 2022

ABOUT THE WINE:

Three different portions of Cinsault go into this wine, all hailing from old vine bush vine blocks. The grapes are harvested by hand and driven to the cellar where they spend a night in the chiller before processing the following day. A small portion of Pinotage from Durbanville gives this wine its backbone and some incredible aging potential.

The whole bunch clusters are sorted by hand before being placed into a small open top fermenter where they are foot stomped. Natural and commercial yeast were used here, fermentation took 10 days to finish with 3 gentle punch downs per day. Once dry, the wine was pressed off skins to tank for settling overnight before being racked to big old french barrels. Wine spent 9 months in barrel and underwent malolactic fermentation whereafter is was racked and blended. The wine was gently filtered before it went to bottle. The Pinotage was naturally fermented with 30% whole bunch and 3 punch downs a day.

ABOUT THE WINEMAKER:

Alex McFarlane is one of the most exciting young winemakers in the Cape at this moment. She makes her wines out of a cellar in the Hemel-en-Aarde, and they are fine wines which are focused and polished and beautiful drinking experiences. Alex focuses on what she calls South Africa's heritage varieties: grapes that showcase the rich cultural landscape of the wine trade, and that have very much shaped what we now know the Cape Winelands to be today.