10 year anniversary of killing my son

Last night, arriving home from work, I made a shocking discovery. Aneen had, without so much as consultation or warning, made an abrupt end to an era. The sandpit I built the kids 10 years ago is gone! Where the sand used to be, now lies beautifully composted soil with plugs of grass. Yip, in the Walser house, it’s out with the sandpit and in with University fees and shaving cream.

But as some of you might know, this is not just any old sandpit. It's the famous sandpit! The one which gave birth to one of my most popular wines to date - FAMILIEMOORD. It’s been 10 years since the Cape Argus wrote the article ”The mystery of the boy in the sandpit”. Yeah, the police thought I killed my son. (If you don’t know the story, click here for the full version or listen to it

So today we celebrate 10 years of MIS-INVESTIGATIONS and YOUTH with the release of Familiemoord 2023. 

Familiemoord originates from (in my eyes) the most beautiful wine producing area in South Africa. The Piekenierskloof… 235 km drive from my house and +-800m above sea-level. Massively high sun intensity, cool nights, sandstone soils, dry land bush vines - all ingredients for all-time Grenache

When the grapes first hit the winery, we hand-sort through about 5% of the total intake. These go as whole bunches to the bottom of a tank, packed around the tap forming a kind of filter/sieve. We then take the balance of the grapes, remove the stems and crush the berries allowing the juice to flow freely.

As we add the crushed grapes to the tank, we try not to disturb our initial “grapes-whole-bunch-filter". The purpose of the “filter" is to block the movement of the skins and pips to only allow the clear juice to flow towards the tap.

We allow the free run salmon pink juice to drain from the tap and pump it into older French oak barrels (this process takes roughly 2 days until 70% of the juice is removed).

The remaining skins and pulp then go through fermentation. During this process, the fibers in the pulp break down and the trapped juice is exposed to the skins. The result: an extracted, perfumy, fine tannin, maximum skin vs juice ratio RED called Familiemoord.