We officially kicked off Harvest 2020 last Tuesday 21 January. As per usual the first varietal that we picked was Pinotage, destined for one of our three wines that we produce with this varietal, our Carpe Diem Pinotage, Diemersfontein Pinotage –  The original coffee/chocolate one, and ‘new kid on the block’ The Prodigy Pinotage. Next we received some Viognier. This we use for our Carpe Diem Viognier and our Sweet Sue, named after owner, David Sonnenberg’s wife, Susan.

We had much better rainfall during the Winter of 2019, which was also followed up by some showers in the last few months. This resulted in our crop already showing potential of much better yield than recorded in the past four years.

So far our weather is really positive for harvesting grapes. Cool evenings and milder days are resulting in higher acids and beautiful berry flavours…fingers crossed that it will stay that way and that we will not experience our usual hellish temperatures during February.

If this weather pattern continues, it should result in grapes ripening evenly and reaching phenolic ripeness (Phenolic ripeness (also referred to as physiological ripeness) refers to the changes in the tannins that occur in grape skins, seeds and stems) for excellent quality, but it’s still early days and anything can happen.

We are looking forward to the 2020 season and we should be in full swing by the first week of February.

That’s it for now; I need to go see what Charl and the team are doing in the vineyards and bringing to the cellar next.