Page 191 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - South Africa

INTRODUCING THE WESTERN AND SOUTHERN C APE  189

The Red Wine-Making Process
Wine is a natural product, and winemakers take
great care during harvesting, production and
maturation to ensure that their wines are of a
high quality and meet the requirements of the
consumer. Modern trends call for minimal
interference in the vineyard and cellar in order
to allow the wines to “speak” for themselves.

Harvesting is carefully timed
to achieve the best flavours
and characters from the
grape. Red grapes are Grapes are cut from the vine with sharp shears to minimize
traditionally harvested later damage to the mature berries
than white grapes, to allow the
development of riper and more
concentrated fruit.
Destalking removes the stems, whose
high tannin content influences the Destalker and
wine’s flavour. The grapes are then crusher
lightly crushed before being put into
a vat for fermentation to begin.

Fermentation
tank

Fermentation occurs over three to five
days. The juice is periodically pumped
over the “cap” formed by the skins to
extract the desired amount of colour Storage tanks
and tannin. After fermentation, the juice and barrels
is separated from the skins, and matured
before blending and bottling. Racking is the transfer of fermented wine
from one tank or cask to another to
remove the “lees”, sediments that would
cause the end product to appear cloudy.
Filtration and fining, often using egg
whites, removes impurities.
Maturation of pinotage
takes 12–15 months. Wooden
Traditionally, big vats maturation
were used, but the barrels
modern trend is to
use small barrels
made of French or The Pinotage
American oak. Association, formed
The size of the in November 1995,
barrel, type of strives to maintain
wood and maturation a consistently high
time combine to shape the character of standard for South
the wine. Once matured, the red wines African Pinotage.
are ready for bottling. It holds an annual
com petition to judge
More than 130 Pinotages are made in South Africa the year’s 10 best wines.

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