from vineyard and cellar
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September 2025
After three unusually dry, completely rain-free weeks, albeit sunny yet still rather cool, the first truly warm spring days arrived in the second week of September, along with the first buds. Now a busy time begins in the vineyard.
July - August 2025: Start to a new season!
The middle of the year always marks the start of the new vintage. This begins with the pruning, a beautiful, sometimes almost meditative task for me. The weather was favorable, with enough nice days for working, but also enough cold spells overall, which is important for the vines to enter a good winter dormancy and then bud again evenly. There was also plenty of rain, this time without causing any havoc like last year. Thus, most water reservoirs in our region are around 85% full by the beginning of spring. This gives us confidence for the new season, and we can look forward to the next vintage!
April - June 2025
After the harvest, it remained comparatively dry, with only one single day of significant rain, namely 50 mm
at the beginning of April. Luckily, there was more rain in May and especially in June,
albeit less than the heavy rains we had last year. Temperaturewise, it was sometimes rather chilly, but that doesn't mean we hide
behind the stove during this time. Quite the opposite: after the harvest, we're always very busy, with bottling,
labeling, and marketing previous vintages.
And finally, we always have new projects: This year, for example,
we're trying to renaturalize part of our vineyard with fynbos, specifically with native plants of the
original
Renosterveld. Together with like-minded neighbors, we want to restore corridors and habitats
for the original flora and fauna in our area to promote the natural balance between vines and nature.
To this end, we planted 3000 plantlings on an area of about 3,000 m² in July. The weather was ideal,
and the plants have established themselves well so far.
Last but not least, in June, another Bein Merlot was named a South Africa's Top 10 Merlot,
this time the Bein Merlot 2023. This makes us the only Merlot producer to be among the
winners of this special Merlot competition for the fourth year in a row.
March 2025 - it's harvest time!
As expected, the ripening parameters sugar, pH, and acidity developed optimally and
very evenly. On March 5th, the time had finally come, and we were able to harvest the
grapes for the red wine in beautiful autumn weather. This year's yield was somewhat
lower at 7.5 t/ha, even though there was hardly anything to sort out other than the
usual bird damage, the grapes being so healthy. What's striking about this harvest
is the good acidity levels and a comparatively lower pH at full ripeness. Our winegrower
colleagues reported similar things: excellent quality with around 5-10% smaller
quantities compared to the long-term average. However, this is still slightly more
than last year's 2024 harvest, which was one of the smallest in 20 years.
After a swift primary fermentation in steel tank, the wine was pressed just nine days later
and is now maturing in small French barriques, where it also undergoes the usual
malo-lactic fermentation. We look forward to the wines of this vintage!
February 2025 - still mild and dry
The mild and dry conditions of this 2024/25 season continue into February, with below-average minimum and maximum temperatures and exceptionally few hot days (with a maximum of 35°C), combined with very little rainfall. These are ideal conditions to ensure even and complete ripening, provided the water status of the vines is optimally managed. Fortunately, we can control this quite precisely using current satellite data, and the water reserves from the rainy winter are sufficient to ensure any irrigation before and after harvest. The dry conditions have also kept the canopy and grapes healthy, allowing us to wait stress-free until our red wine grapes are ready for the main harvest, which is now expected to be early March.
January 2025 - It's bubbly time
Since we have a sparkling wine in our range, the harvest naturally
begins very early, namely in January shortly after the color change, in
order to obtain a base wine with a correspondingly low alcohol content and
sufficient acidity. So our harvest began this year on January 27th. And what
a harvest! The grapes were simply of superb quality and uniformly
ripe. The resulting wine is fermented in a stainless steel tank, where it
was allowed to develop for a few weeks before it is briefly put into
seasoned barrels for further maturation and stabilization. The weather
continued to play along in January, dry but with moderate temperatures.
We now look forward to a great red wine harvest, which
we expect to take place in the first days of March.
November - December 2024
In November and December, conditions were generally moderate, with little rainfall and mild temperatures, which were significantly long-term average, especially in our coastal area. Thanks to the abundant winter rainfall, there is still enough water available for irrigation, which we had to use for the first time at the end of December. The mild conditions favored healthy growth of the vines and should have a positive effect on the quality of the future wine. Only over Christmas did the temperatures briefly rise up to 35 °C, hopefully ushering-in a healthy ripening period!
August - October 2024
From August onwards the weather returned to "normal", i.e. it was still rainy but no longer torrential, with a total of 142mm in August and 50mm in September, with fairly cold temperatures, but with enough rain-free days for the winter pruning, which was thus completed in good time by the end of September. At the beginning of October, the long-awaited spring arrived with sunny weather, although still quite cold and with little rain for the time of year, so that the soils starting to dry up. The first signs of budswell was observed at the beginning of October, and the shoots finally began to emerge by mid-month, significantly later than last year, but in line with the long-term average.
In September we also had to replace the air conditioning for the cellar and took the opportunity to switch to a modern inverter chiller unit to match the solar system. And the new technology is totally convincing, as the new system only uses half as much electricity as before.
June - July 2024:
After an exceptionally mild autumn with lots of sun and warm temperatures up to and including June,
the winter weather in July was even more severe: very cold temperatures and 350 mm of rain, more
than ever before in a single month! The rainfall was so heavy at times that
in many vineyards, deep gullies and dongas formed, slopes slipped and
there were floods in many places.
A positive highlight of these days was when another of our wines was
voted into the top-10-Merlot of
South Africa in the eponymous competition. This time, our Little Merlot 2021 won the race
for this prestigious award, making us the only Merlot producer to win this competition
three times :-)
Previous reports have been condensed to vintage reports for each year and can be looked up there.
