Gerhard Swart’s Flagstone 2020 Harvest Update

This week we picked the old bush vine Chenin Blanc for our Tributary wine as well as the last of this year’s Chenin that is specifically reserved for a new Flagstone Icon wine. This year’s Chenin is good quality and the grapes have ripened with lower sugar levels that will result in slightly lower alcohol levels. The juice fermenting shows a fresh acidity and some vibrant tropical and stone-fruit aroma and flavours.

We have picked our first Pinotage and ferments are beginning with deep, dark colours and sweet red berry and strawberry flavours. This Pinotage is destined for Truth Tree and Dragon Tree Cape Blend from old bush vine dryland vineyards in the Swartland.

The aromas and flavours of the Sauvignon Blanc grapes are particularly exciting, we began picking the Darling region Sauvignon Blanc on Wednesday and the Walker Bay ward in the Cape South Coast region on Thursday.

Our first load of Viognier was picked on Wednesday, this is destined for Word of Mouth, arriving some ten days earlier than last year. Once again, the beautiful perfumy fruit coming out of Stellenbosch promises great things – Our 2019 Word of Mouth is made exclusively from Stellenbosch fruit.

2020 has seen multiple different cultivars ripening simultaneously, this has seen an influx of 17% of the harvest arriving at the cellar in the just one week. It’s an extremely busy time of the year, but we love it!

Keep an eye out for the harvest video clips I’ve been creating during this year’s harvest – they’re posted to the Our News section of the website.