Transient Lands Pinotage 2021, Angus Paul, Stellenbosch

This vintage shows a fine balance of delicacy and power. The wine shows a slight cracked pepper character backed up by waves of dark red fruit: cherries, cranberry, crushed strawberries. The palate is equally fruit forward and primary, but complemented by the cracked pepper character, slight reduction and firm structure. Though Pinotage is born of two grapes known for delicacy, stylistically it is usually geared toward power. This bottling shows a more classic interpretation, one that required no manipulation or box-squeezing to achieve.

Angus Paul has a passion for South African heritage varietals, focussing on Chenin Blanc and Pinotage, and believes in minimal intervention winemaking – a combination that clearly works well.

The vision for Transient Lands is to ‘source, blend and bottle special parcels of Pinotage across the Western Cape and become an expression of each vintage through that grape’s proverbial lens.’.

Grapes are hand picked and cooled overnight. They were then fermented in open-top bins. Of the grapes, 35% were foot trodden whole bunches, and the remainder destemmed. A light sulphur addition was made at crushing. Fermentation took place over 10 days after which a maceration was carried out until the tannins had developed satisfactorily. After draining, the remaining grapes were pressed to old wooden barrels. A spontaneous malolactic fermentation then took place, and in early Autumn wines were sulphured for the first time. Wines were bottled in December after having spent 11 months in barrel with no racking.