Darling Cellars Lime Kilns 2019

2021 Veritas Awards - Silver

This wine shows a lot of tropical notes like peaches apricot, honeycomb and orange peel. This is a seriously complexed wine that has a great mid palate with good length and ageing potential.

79% Chenin Blanc, 10.5% Viognier, 10.5% Chardonnay

Pairs well with smoked duck, roasted chicken, Norwegian salmon, pan-frie. This is a definite food wine.

The grapes are harvested from dry land farmed vineyards in Darling, where the vines are not trellised and planted as bush vines on deep red oakleaf soils. These grapes ripen as nature intended without human intervention. Vineyards are monitored for optimal picking times,adopting a combination of sampling and tasting to optimize the richer tropical (thiol)notes. The Viognier vines are situated high up in the south-western facing hills looking towards Table Mountain, Chenin Blanc harvested from 38 years old bush vines and the Chardonnay from 24-year-oldvines. All three vineyards produce very low yields of 2-3 tons per hectare.

Crush and destalk, 12 hours skin contact. Cultivars are barrel fermented separately in 500 litre French oak barrels. Racked to barrels and left for 9 months on fine lees. Aged for 2-3 months on fermentation lees to add complexity.