How is it already MAY?! It’s been a very busy start to the year and after a well needed post-harvest break, I have had time to reflect on the harvest season and first few of months of the year. The 2024 harvest started with a bang with the grapes ripening on average 10 days earlier than previous years. Following one of the wettest winters the Cape has experienced, we had the driest summer in the last 12 years, leading to the earlier ripening of the grapes. Anticipating the worst but really hoping for the best, mother nature kindly didn’t throw any big curveballs our way during the picking season, which was a big relief. There were no major weather spells and we got to enjoy a season of picking at optimal ripeness in the perfect order of varieties, in other words, it was smooth sailing in the winery! It was a very quick harvest and the quality of the grapes was exceptional. Good concentration of fruit flavours, small berries and yields ever so slightly up from
last year.

Winemakers being winemakers, we get very excited about the new toys in the winery when we are lucky enough to acquire them. This vintage we got a new clay Amphora imported from Italy, which we have used on a portion of Semillon that will go into the Constantia Glen TWO. We hope that this will be an interesting addition to the blend bringing in more texture to the palate of the wine. We also purchased two new barrels from a French barrel cooper that we have not used before. This cooper makes use of a new toasting method. One barrel has been toasted with lava rocks, which is a patented heated stone technology, and the other barrel is toasted with the traditional fire method.

We have trialled these two barrels with the same batch of Cabernet Franc, so we can taste them side by side to see the difference with this new toasting method. This gets me very excited for our big tasting in January when we can see just how well these wines have handled these new barrels.

For now, the winery has quietened down with time to catch up on admin while we wait for the malolactic fermentation (MLF) to finish on the red wines before we start the next load of heavy-duty barrel work that keeps us busy for a couple
of months.