Seelug 2024

A fresh, elegantly oaked, limey and delicious Chardonnay - more to the serious side of things.

The Story:

First things first though - some relevant terminologies: Off-shore wind - air movement off-the-shore, into-the-ocean. On-shore wind - air movement from-the-ocean, onto-the-shore. Chop/wit pertjies / white horses - Little waves produced by long distance air movement over large expanses of open ocean surfaces. Sampling - The picking of random grape berries from a vineyard in order to get a representable sample to determine ripeness. Seelug - Sea Air.

One hot day, during the harvest of ’22, I was sampling a little (as yet) un-named Chardonnay vineyard which a good friend had told me about. Situated on the lower slopes of the Helderberg, it overlooks False Bay. Glancing over towards the ocean that day, I could clearly see that the off-shore wind was blowing. This was good news to the Strand local I am, as the elusive off-shore wind grooms the waves, making them perfect for my local surf spot. I made a mental note to get a move-on with my sampling, no time to lose. But 20 minutes later, as I once again raised my head from my berry-picking, grape-squashing exercise, I glanced over the bay. D’oh! (as Homer Simpson would say) - the wind had turned onshore. I could clearly see the tell-tale "wit perdjies" on the horizon heading towards shore. In a few minutes the perfectly groomed waves would be destroyed. Deflated, I carried on with the task at hand.

Then, another 20 minutes later it hit me - SEELUG! It suddenly felt like someone was spraying my sun-baked face with a cool, misty oyster extract - a fragrance of fresh, salty, damp bamboo…

So whilst the onshore might be wrecking waves, it simultaneously pushes the hot air inland and hugs every Chardonnay plant in that vineyard with a fragranced coolness which not many vines ever experience. A fresh, elegantly oaked, limey and delicious Chardonnay - more to the serious side of things.