Cape Rock Amnesty 2015

For many South African citizens, the small fishing village of Doringbaai on the West Coast, 300km north of Cape Town, seemed like the ideal holiday destination. Beautiful coastal scenery combined with cooling Atlantic breezes made the town one of peace and tranquillity. There was but one problem for the residents of Doringbaai: a giant octopus angered by the eccentric and unreasonable requests of Aquaman sought to take it out on all humans. Every couple of weeks it would tear down their lighthouse and then attempt to marry a brightly coloured fishing trawler.

Sick of perpetually rebuilding lighthouses, the people of Doringbaai sought an amnesty with the sea creature. In an attempt to mollify it, they poured the beast a glass of local red wine. A blend of Syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre, light bodied with a sweet nose of red berries, combining spiced and herbaceous notes. The red wine was so lifted and elegantly aromatic, the octopus and the people of Doringbaai became the best of friends, whilst Aquaman had to learn to do his own ironing.

Cape Rock Wines is situated 300km north from Cape Town and 30 km east from Doringbaai on the West Coast between the towns of Vredendal and Klawer. The vineyards are located on a single 11-hectare farm just above the banks of the Olifants river floodplain. The Cape Rock brand was established in 2001 when they started to make bulk wine on their farm to add value to the grapes they grow for the cooperative.

Cape Rock is a family run winery. Father Willie Brand and son Gavin Brand are self-taught and share winemaking responsibilities. Willie tends to the viticulture, while mother Desireé assists with the piles of admin that is created in the process. Gavin is a landscape architect by training and still spends more than half his time running his own practice in Cape Town when not occupied by wine making and marketing activities. Father, Willie registered the Cape Rock brand with lobster emblem for a wine venture aimed at producing a Vino Verde style wine in the late 1990’s, but it never quite took off and the brand was used for the family wine project.

Their first bottled wine was a Shiraz/Viognier blend in 2005 and many more wines followed. Total production currently varies between 12000 and 20 000 bottles per year depending on the yield and quality of the grapes. The Cape Rock philosophy is simple, to create wines that are balanced and speak of place. They aim to use varieties for their virtues, one ads spice, the other acid, tannin, colour, body etc.

The grapes were handpicked in the morning. The wine was fermented and aged in separate batches. The majority of the grapes were destemmed with 10 - 15% of bunches left whole. All fermentations were natural in open fermenters. Pump overs and punch downs were performed twice daily to daily during the end of the fermentation. The free run juice was racked off the pulp and after pressing the wine components were racked to old 225L and 300L French oak barrels in which it matured for 11 months. The wine was racked from the barrels and blended two weeks prior to bottling it unfined, not cold stabilised and very lightly filtered. No eggs or dairy products were used in the production of this wine.