Confessions of a WHITE GLOVE chaser 2019
Yes, he's back! For those of you with great long-term memories: this is one of the BLANKBOTTLE classics (in my opinion). For some odd, unexplainable reason I stopped making this wine back in 2015. Maybe I was a bit ashamed of the way I went about sourcing these grapes, but it still speaks of a specific time in my life - a difficult time where I had to do what I had to do in order to get my foot in the game. This is one of those juicy stories where I have to count my words to avoid stepping on toes. The StoryFor a start, you have to realise that at the time (2013) I didn't have a budget for a vineyard consultant. So I was forced to be creative. Strategic vineyard-site selection is where all wine begins. I was mostly focussed on many unusual varietals of which there were very little on offer, so in a way it made it easy to choose a site. You take what you can get.
But I wanted to start making Bordeaux - stuff like Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Malbec. The Helderberg has many plantings but I didn’t have a clue how to separate the chaff from the wheat. And no money to pay someone to do it for me.
So this one particular day I was driving past a vineyard and saw something strange: the picking team was wearing white surgical gloves! I pulled off the road and asked the pickers who they were picking for. At the time there were rumours going round about these guys and I knew that they were spending obscene amounts of cash on local and international consultants in areas like viticulture and soil science - basically terroir fundi's. Their ultimate goal: to sift through the huge amount of Bordeaux vineyards on offer to pick only the very best. So I asked the farmer if I could buy the grapes as close as possible to the piece going to the White Gloves.
This is my confession about how I started chasing the White Gloves. Where they bought, I bought as close to them as possible. Sometimes right next to them. It was that simple. My creative low-budget strategy.
Confessions of a White Glove Chaser 2019: 60% Cabernet franc with 40% Cabernet Sauvignon - all from the Helderberg.
The label: I traced the shape of my (at the time) 8-year-old son's hand and using linography, created the image for the label. The wine, like all my wines: made, hand bottled and hand labeled - by the colourful people of South Africa
Technical InformationVintage: 2019How to orderPlease note
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