TOKARA ESTATE PREMIUM CABERNET SAUVIGNON

Description

Tokara owes its existence and quality to the well-heeled and impassioned devotion of GT & Anne-Marie Ferreira, who bought this property in the 90’s and spared no expense in elaborating the best expressions of Simonsberg possible. To that end, Tokara was modeled after the great estates of Bordeaux, building a state-of-the-art gravity-fed cellar, hiring the best minds in South African viticulture and winemaking, gleaning the learned lessons of their generous neighbouring vineyards, and implementing the most advanced methods and technologies for vineyard stewardship. In thanks to their neighbours who had gone before them and so happily shared with them the best vine row orientations, clonal selections, and planting densities/varieties they had discovered through decades of experimentation, Tokara in turn shared the use of their technologies – like NDVI drone mapping, and consulting with the foremost professors and agronomists to eradicate leaf roll virus for the whole region. Zero corners cut. The result are award winning wines that have raised the profile and quality of wine growing in the entire sub-zone.

But, with all that in mind, we would be remiss to talk about the winery without talking about the place: Simonsberg Mountain. Without waxing too poetic about it, this is one of the oldest geological structures on earth at about 600 million years old, and the same goes for the granite soils around it. With its scorched back to the gnarly northern sun, the mountain gifts the vineyards below much-needed shade in key hours of the day. Moreover, this granite tooth in the plain gathers clouds about it, catching likewise much-needed rains that visit every winter, replenishing the clay subsoils. All that to say, their terroir is some of the best that winemaker could ask for anywhere.

For this wine, hand-picked grapes were destemmed before passing across a sorting table for the removal of all unwanted material and then crushed directly into stainless steel tanks and wooden upright (foudre) fermenters. The must was cooled to between 10 and 15°C for a cold soak before fermentation started naturally with indigenous yeast. Pump-overs, délestage, and punching down of the cap are all used as best determined for ideal extraction, implemented twice a day until fermentation was complete. A discretionary post fermentation maceration is carried out depending on tannin extraction and development. The wine’s then racked to french oak for MLF, after which it is again racked, dosed with SO2, and put back to barrel. The wine ages for a total of nineteen months in 20% new French oak barriques, the remainder being older oak barriques. During maturation the wines receives two rackings, and a light fining and filtration before bottling.