Craven Wines - CINSAULT Stellenbosch W.O. 2022 750ml (12% ABV)

Craven Wines is a winemaking collaboration between husband-and-wife team Mick and Jeanine Craven. Mick is an Aussie currently working as lead winemaker at Mulderbosch during the day; Jeanine is South African, and they met in California 'dragging hoses' in Sonoma for harvest in 2007. After both having taken to the textbooks at their respective universities, they decided to hit the road, see lots of things, work in lots of places and try and learn as much as possible from this massive wine world. After travelling across the world together for four years and learning about wines in Australia, Europe, the States and South America, the couple returned to South Africa in late 2011. They feel Stellenbosch has such an amazing array of sites and terroir, and that it is perfect for what they want to do, which is making site-specific, honest wines.

Gamay-esque royal purple color. This has a wonderfully aromatic bouquet, herbal, cranberry and pomegranate seeds with a bit of a rhubarb and bay leaf emerging with air. It offers red berries, black currants, rooibos tea, plum, white pepper and salinity on the palate. Starts fresh and fun, and is great with a bit of a chill, but this has some true structure with chalky tannins rounding out the finish.

region: Stellenbosch, South Africa

varietal: Cinsault

style: red

farming/cellar: Certified Sustainable, Unlike Mick's usual red winemaking style, the Cinsault grapes are destemmed before fermentation due to the natural low acidity. Gentle pump-overs or punch downs are performed 1- 2 times a day throughout fermentation, and the wine is pressed to 500L barrels for maturation. It is bottled slightly earlier than their other red wines in an effort to express the fresher, brighter characters of Cinsault. The wine is bottled unfined and unfiltered, with nothing added during the winemaking process apart from a dash of sulfur.

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