Vintage report 2025
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Merlot 2025 Vintage Report
Following extreme rainfall in July 2024, a cool but dry spring and summer ensued, with predominantly moderate temperatures. Thanks to targeted irrigation, these conditions provided optimal prerequisites for healthy vine growth. The harvest began on January 27th with the grapes for the base wine of the sparkling wine. Thanks to the continued dry weather, the red wine grapes also ripened very evenly and were finally harvested on March 5th in perfect a utumn weather. With a slightly lower yield of 7.5 t/ha, the grapes impressed with their excellent health and an optimal balance of sugar, acidity, and low pH, promising outstanding wines from this vintage. And as a crowning achievement to the season, in June 2025, another Bein Merlot was named one of South Africa's top 10 Merlots, this time the 2023 Bein Merlot. This makes us the only Merlot producer to be among the winners in this specific Merlot competition for the fourth year in a row.
- Bein Merlot 2025: Harvested on March 5, 2025, pressed in stainless steel tanks after 12 days of Cuvaison, and aged as pure Merlot for 12 months in French oak barrels (25% new). It is a worthy representative of this excellent vintage. Bottled on April 21, 2026, in 4,200 0.75L bottles and 1,520 0.375L "half-bottles," it will now undergo a further year of bottle maturation before its expected release in 2027.
- Due to the very balanced quality of the grapes, no Reserve nor Pink Merlot was produced this year.
- MCC brut rosé 2025, our sparkling wine,
produced using the classic Méthode Cap classique, naturally from
Merlot grapes (with a touch of Muscat d'Alexandrie ;-)
Harvested this year on January 27, 2025, it was carefully cold-fermented in stainless steel tanks and aged for another 10 months in older barriques for malolactic fermentation and further stabilization. On January 22, it was bottled for its second fermentation. Disgorgement is now planned for mid-2026
Monthly Reports from the 2024/25 vintage
April - June 2025
After the harvest, 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.
Previous reports have been condensed to vintage reports for each year and can be looked up there.
