BLACK 2008

BLACK (reference to the Swartland) 2008 is predominantly Syrah (Riebeek and Paardeberg grapes) with bits of Grenache, Mourvèdre and Carignan form the Paardeberg. This wine is the result of a friendship, 7 years experience of creating Swartland wines, the BLANKbottle philosophy and my search for great Syrah in the Swartland. The wine is dense and intense but is presented with sophisticated elegance. The 2010 vintage is in barrel, but for now this wine is a once off limited bottling. We’ll see how the 2010 vintage turns out…

The Story:

As you know, BLANKbottle develops through the dynamics of my life journeys and friendships - each wine an expression of these priceless discoveries. 2009, at the annual Vitners Surf Classic I met a guy called Albert Ahrens who, at the time, had been making Swartland wines for 7 years straight. Through yet another BLANKbottle friendship, iron gates to some of the Swartland’s best vineyards were unlocked. And hence was born BLACK and THE WHITE BLACK.

These two wines are a combination of 11 expensive vineyards within the Swartland area and were aged in the best barrels money can buy. Both carry the characteristics of a typical Swartland white and Swartland red; wines with patriotic personality and character. We produced a very limited amount of these wines with 23% of the stock already allocated before release. To match the wine quality we had to go all out with the packaging - designing the atypical labels ourselves, authentic wax jobs on the bottle necks, wrapped in tissue paper, secured by another wax job done by hand. These wines are again exclusive to the BLANKbottle community.