Brookdale Estate, Sixteen Field Blend, Paarl, South Africa

Pressed French linen on the line, meadow blossoms, light and lovely. Visions of flower crowns, of fresh grass trampled underfoot, of white strawberries, cranberries. It’s a midsummer of a wine. Evocative tug of toast, almonds and flint dances in. On the palate a creamy acid backbone sketches around luminous fruit, ascending into white-pear succulence and mouth-watering freshness. Defined by a weightless complexity, the fruit is ethereal, diaphanous, yet offers depth and dimension, and carries into a long, white-chalk finish. (lol)

A celebration of the lost art of field blend winemaking; 16 white varietals were inter-planted as bush vines on decomposed shale and granite. The grapes were picked at 4 different stages due to the ripening variation of the varietals. The fruit was pre-cooled and whole bunch pressed, before spontaneous fermentation, followed by 100% malolactic fermentation. 40% of the wine was fermented and aged in concrete egg and 60% in clay amphora for 12 months on lees prior to bottling and spent 4 months in bottle before release.