Painted Wolf Ros Pinotage Rosé 2019

Tasting Notes: This is a wonderfully dry, fruity rosé with delicate pomegranate and cranberry aromas complimented by subtle hints of rose petal. On the palate these are joined by savoury, almost biscuity flavours underlined by crisp acidity. We are always proud of our rosé but this is, dare we say it, our best yet!

The story of this wine:The den wines are social wines to be enjoyed with friends and family. These wines are named for the den, the heart of all African wild dog communities. Flavour-packed, soft and juicy comfort wines for every day drinking.

Jenny Metelerkamp produced a fine Painted Wolf ink drawing for the label.

Food suggestions: A superb multitasker. Especially good with peri peri prawn, Greek style lemon chicken, quiche, ratatouille, calamari, fish and chips, meze, tapas and just about anything else smoky, tangy and garlicy.

The vineyard:We set out to make the most delicious and compelling dry rosé from Pinotage. Grapes were picked in the last week of January and the wine was made in two tranches – one portion was whole-bunch pressed and the second portion was gently crushed with around 6 hours of skin contact. The two wines were blended together.

Winemaking:The grapes for this wine were sourced from a single block of Pinotage in the Paarl region, picked especially for making rosé.
We have set out to make the finest and most elegant dry Rosé possible from Pinotage. The grapes were handpicked into small baskets and taken to the cellar and were destalked and gently crushed. The juice had roughly 12 hours of skin contact before we gravity drained the juice off the skins. We recovered 9500 litres of juice from 24 tons of grapes, the lightest and most elegant free run juice.

Ageing Potential: This wine is exceptional as a young wine but will gain complexity and interest with a couple of years of bottle ageing.