So the harvest is finished now, the month of April passed by with all its holidays and everybody is going up a gear, because business is starting to pick up again.

We were truly blessed the past few weeks. About a month and a half ago we were finished with our harvest, and as you all know by now the growing recession has also put quite a damper on our orders, so for the first time in quite a while there was really not much to do around here.

And then, all of a sudden out of nowhere the orders started to come in again! And to top it all of...we received great news about our Clos Malverne Pinotage Reserve 2007. At the recent Concours Mondial de Bruxelles International Wine competition in Spain we were awarded a Grand Gold Medal for the above mentioned wine! To put this a little bit in perspective...over 6200 wines from 54 different countries entered the competition and according to how the judges score your wine (the wine is awarded a point out of a 100) you either can get a silver, gold or a double gold awarded to your wine. Then, for all the wines that scored above 96 out of a 100 a Grand Gold Medal is awarded. This year, of all the wines only about 60 were awarded a Grand Gold and of that 60 wines, only two came out of South Africa and one of them was our Pinotage Reserve 2007.

We are truly thankful and all of this has lifted the spirits from the people in the office through to guys in the cellar and as I mentioned before, we take this as a blessing.

I think that this is going to be a good year for the reds, as I have noted in my previous newsletter. A nice surprise was when I analyzed the wines at the end of April I found that all my reds were through malolactic fermentation, something I struggled with almost till the end of September last year! This means that I can clean up and put my wines in barrels earlier this year and therefore it can spend more time in barrel than the previous harvest. It’s nice to have time on your side.
On the Sauvignon Blanc side, the 2009 vintage is now almost finished with their 3 months extended lees contact so we will soon start to clean and stabilize the different tanks.
Definitely something to look forward to is the 2009 Sauvignon Blanc.

So, from running around between racking, bottling, labelling and looking after my cover crop in the vineyards, with pruning to start soon, (its nice to be busy again) I am looking forward to giving you an update soon on how things are developing.

Lets hold thumbs and support the Boks against the Lions this month! (with a nice glass of Clos Malverne in your hand of course...)

Greetings
Charl