A delicate free run Rosé of serious quality from a 30 year old bush-vine vineyard in Paarl, whose appetisingly savoury bite offsets the gentle, creamy texture.

This rosé is a fine, lightly savoury wine with real depth.The older oak wraps this dry, mineral wine in a delicate creamy veil ultimately leaving a bright, structured and fine finish.

A Wildeberg wine begins life when we fall for a specific vineyard. The next step is simply expressing that place. In this case we fell upon a block of organically-farmed, dry-grown bush-vine Cinsault grown on the Agter-Paarl’s mineral seams. To then capture that purity of delicate fruit and texture we chose to make a saignée rosé. The fruit was picked at a ripeness optimal for this rosé’s natural acidity, in the cool of dawn and trucked up the road to Wildeberg. The fruit harvested just made a full single press, which was then gently squeezed to old French oak demi-muids for natural fermentation. The colour comes just from that light press and spends no further time on skins. The gourd-shaped bottle amplifies the shallot-skin hue of the wine and the individual printed wraps protect the wine from light-strike until opened.

The Earth’s mantle thrusts up above the gentle town of Franschhoek, a wild slice of untamed mountain on which sits a farm named Wildeberg. An established wine region for some 350 years, sensible generations never thought to plant a vine here until a happy band of idealists recently craned their necks up at this hillside and, dizzy with hope, decided to give it a go. Franschhoek is on the very edge of the south-eastern corner of the Cape’s venerable Coastal Region, indeed Wildeberg’s property border runs over the top of the mountain where the Coastal Region gives way to the baboon-strewn road to Grabouw and the wider Western Cape.

Drink chilled on its own or serve with fresh seafood, a quinoa and pomegranate salad or herb marinated grilled chicken tenders.