General Boesjaly 2021

This is a Breedekloof Pinotage, Wellington Grenache, Stellenbosch Cinsaut, Elgin Pinot noir, Chenin blanc.

The Story:

General Boesjaly - a record time from grape to bottle… 4 months ago General Boesjaly was still blushing its red berry skin in the African sun. Today you have the opportunity to take it to your glass. In true BLANKBOTTLE fashion I could have actually called it “Kortpad glas toe" 

24 years ago for me, lightning struck - it was the vines of Alsace on the border of France and Germany that finally convinced me. From that moment forward, I wanted to be part of the rough life of a farmer and the process and eventual expression thereof in the classy, sophisticated product of wine.

At the time I was working for Jean-Luc Meckert who has a small, family owned vineyard and cellar in Alsace. One evening at the end of harvest, as I entered the town square, I was handed a plastic cup filled with wine - the first of the season. To them, that plastic cup of wine resembled a celebration of a vintage that was embedded into the vine in deep winter, a vintage that battled against the winds and battened down the hatches as early heat waves struck with untimely rain. It represented a collective sigh of relief as the farmers took the grapes into the cellars of Alsace.

These celebratory first wines of the season first started becoming very popular in the 1800's and a wine style in its own right was born. The most well known of these wines come from an area in France called Beaujolais, and they subsequently call these wines Beaujolais Nouveau.

General Boesjaly - fresh, vibrant and young - the epitome of potential - the potential of another memorable vintage - now in its deep winter rest inside our cellar.