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De Royan Newsletter Autumn 2010 |
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Dear wine friends & family |
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Autumn is upon us and the vines are looking forward to a well deserved rest during the winter months. With autumn comes the time to reflect on the season that has passed. It is a time for having faith that what we have done in the vineyards & the cellar will be enough and give us the hope to pursue our family credo with love. Love that will be eminent in your next glass when you experience the new vintage of our wines.
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Recommended Seasonal Pack
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At home, we are stocking the fireplaces with dry wood and flipping through the recipe books to gather those heart-warming dishes for the upcoming winter. We are also absorbing the beauty of the Boland in autumn, with the skies becoming bluer and crispier as the earth turns into a colourful quilt of reds, yellows, oranges and browns. We have assembled a selection of wines which should be the perfect accompaniment for these peaceful autumn days, where ever you are! |
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3x Chenin Blanc
for those creamy butternut soup and home baked bread evenings.
3x Rose
for those sunny weekend-paper patio moments in your garden.
2x Cabernet Sauvignon
for the slow pot-roast lamb shank Sundays.
3x Adama
to keep our eyes fixed on colour and the wealth of natural beauty in South Africa.
1x Chenin Blanc (Old Bush Vine)
to remember those lessons learnt from generations before us.
Price: R 895 (Average bottle price: R74.58)
Click for more information and to order your Seasonal Pack! |
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Harvest Festival 2010
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What a weekend! Thank you to all our visitors who supported one of the best Harvest Festivals to date. We had two fantastic sunny days on Saturday & Sunday the 20th and 21st of March, with close to 350 people per day joining our Long Lunch. There was delicious Mediterranean food by Marc’s, mouth watering sushi by Harry Sushi and excellent live entertainment by Bravo. These guys had our guests in spontaneous applause with their skills as vocalists & entertainers. Keep an eye out for them!
A warm welcome to all who joined our newsletter and wine club over the weekend! We trust that you will enjoy hearing from us from time to time. For us, it is important to share our passion for excellent wine with others and we believe that with our newsletter and the wine club we will keep our friends of Bosman Wines within reach of the values we as a family treasure.
Dates for the Wellington Harvest Festival 2011 have not yet been released, but we will let you know in advance. |
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VINEYARD REPORT
Double blow!
The season had a promising start with a cold and wet winter with lower temperatures than the previous year. However, exceptionally strong winds while the Chenin Blanc & Chardonnay were in bloom, caused significant reduction in the yield of the harvest. It also reduced the crop of the early red cultivars (such as Pinotage & Merlot), with bunches being slim and bearing less grapes per bunch.
After the wind damage, we had late rains in November (160 mm), which affected the later ripening varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon. The rain did not stop for quite some time and the drenched soil prevented us from entering the vineyards, resulting in mildew on the bunches and a further reduction of the crop.
With these two big setbacks, damage was already done in terms of the quantity of the grapes, but we could still HOPE that the quality would be good. |
Heinie Nel (Viticulturalist) |
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Harvest Report | Tour de Force
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We started the harvest with fantastic white varieties such as Chenin Blanc and Chardonnay. The early bird on the red cultivars’ side was the Pinotage which showed rich flavours. The Shiraz has exceptional concentration and Merlot and Cabernet Franc have clean, rich flavours. However, so many of the grapes are still on the skins, that it would be premature to make any final judgements.
It was a harvest with a cool, slow start, but as the temperatures soared, so did the pressure to make sure that all vineyards came into the cellar at optimum ripeness. We were on target, estimating that volumes would be lower. Luckily we are blessed by being able to source from vineyards with exceptional depth in terms of quality. Hence, we still managed to select the quality we needed to produce exceptional wines (similar to the rugby coach having the ability to select a good first XV at a big rugby school such as Paul Roos Gymnasium!)
Logistically the harvest was a “tour de force” – all you need to keep your head humbly on your shoulders and not up in the clouds! |
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Corlea Fourie (Winemaker) |
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The Bosmans & Lelienfontein | 9th Generation Chapter Starts
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It was my great great grandfather, Petrus (“Piet Ribbe” Bosman), who accompanied his mother to the Transvaal (now Gauteng) after his father, Jan Christoffel’s early death. Once grown-up and independent his plan was to return to the farm of his upbringing, Rosendal (now Mooiplaas on Bottelary Rd, Stellenbosch).
However, he needed wheels to get back to the Boland, and in those days it was in the form of a horse cart. He had the cart, but he needed the horse power! The man renowned for the best cart horses in the Boland was a man by the name of Jacobus Johannes (“Lang Kooitjie”) Malan, and “Piet Ribbe” went to enquire from him in 1889 on the farm Lelienfontein.
It was the neighbouring farm, Groenfontein, with its beautiful soil, which caught “Piet Ribbe’s” eye during this visit and with some encouragement from “Lang Kooitjie”, he bought the farm. The farm was not the only thing that caught his eye: “Lang Kooitjie’s” beautiful daughter, Sophy, made a lasting impression. They got married and this was the start of the Bosman connection with the farm, Lelienfontein.
Carla & I recently celebrated the birth of our first child, Jan Christoffel Bosman. He will be the 9th generation of the family on Lelienfontein. The 2010 vintage will be a constant reminder of one of the most joyful occasions of our lives. |
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May you have time this autumn to slow down and listen to its rhythm. May you be comfortable in the pace of autumn, and may you see more beauty around you.
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