Kortpad Kaaptoe 2019

CULTIVARS: 100% Fernao Pires a.k.a Maria Gomez

PLEASE NOTE: There are 2 bottlings of Kortpad Kaaptoe!!! One with a white and gold label (refined version) and one with a black and gold label (a bodybuilder). In the beginning years I had no idea how to make Fernao Pirez. So I picked when the grapes were fully ripe. Resulting is hugely expressive, larger framed wines. Not massive in a bad way, just excessive. 

Over the years, as I got to know the varietal better, we started picking in three batches. An early, mid and late batch. Kortpad Kaaptoe became elegant. The people who like these wines were very different to the ones who like the largely framed version. And this resulted in the request for the return of the body builder.

So here you have it: the black and gold label - Properly muccular.

The story:

If you drive on the road between Malmesbury and Darling, about halfway you turn right onto a little dirt road and drive for another 15 km until you reach the flatlands. This is where you will find this vineyard. 

It looks like a desert out there. The topsoil is 30cm of white sand with an iron rich subsoil we in South Africa call Koffieklip - literally translated it would mean coffee soil. It got its name from the little pebbles in the soil that look like coffee beans surrounded by a clay rich iron saturated soil. 

The vineyard has no irrigation and it is 39 years old with its roots deeply developed into the subsoil. For some reason the ground water level is high. I can only imagine that a shallow water vein runs through that specific section of the desert-like area, providing the deep roots a supply of water.

ALCOHOL (%): 14.5%

RESIDUAL SUGAR (g/L): 5.06

TOTAL ACIDITY (g/L): 4

PH: 3.67

The story of Kortpad Kaaptoe: 

In August 2011, on a farm somewhere between Darling and Hopefield on the West Coast of South Africa, I was visiting a block of grapes, Carignan. I received a SMS from someone who needed me to be in Cape Town within the next hour. Being in the middle of nowhere, I asked the farmer the quickest way to Cape Town. In Afrikaans (one of the 11 official languages of South Africa), the "kortpad Kaaptoe". He said that I needed to drive towards the Carignan, past the Shiraz and Fernao Pirez....

"The FERNAO WHAT???", I asked him? "Fernao Pirez" he replied. Bush vines, unirrigated, planted by his grandfather 38 years before. So, on my shortest way to Cape Town (the "kortpad kaaptoe"), I found Fernao Pirez. A varietal I had never tasted wine of and something I never knew existed in South Africa. And that brings me to something so very important to me.

I love interesting, true stories. So if I find a story like this, a bit of family history stumbled upon on my shortest route to Cape Town, I want to tell that story, disguised as a bottle of wine. So it is not ONLY about the wine. In life everything needs to be seen in context. If you take things out of context, wine becomes one dimensional and boring in a way.

The label: Linocut of AC/DC inspired font. Printed on real organics paper with as much gold bling as possible. Labels are hand applied with old-style wet glue technique. Please note that the label will slip off the bottle when it gets wet. The label is as natural as the wine inside the bottle.