Location: Twee Jonge Gezellen, Tulbagh - Home of Krone Vintage-Only MCC
We have been night harvesting our grapes since the early 1980s. This method allows us to preserve grape quality and the delicate aromas and flavours, which we capture in the cool of the night, before the heat of the day.
Spring arrived early in 2019, after a wet winter, which broke the three-year drought. We recorded less cold units in 2019 winter compared to 2018.
With the late rains in October through to November and milder temperatures gave us good vegetative growth with healthy canopies in the vineyards. These helped to protect the grapes from direct sunlight when the heat arrived in December and January, preserving the acidities in the berries.
In the cellar we had the new Coquard and Bucher presses installed, which allowed us to harvest and process more grapes in a day than in the past. This enabled us to harvest all the MCC grapes on Twee Jonge Gezellen, before the notorious end-of-January heat wave arrived. This in turn yielded pressed grape juice with amazingly low pH values and high acidities.
Notable were the high malic acid concentrations in the juices and fermented base wines. This together with the healthy fruit should make some outstanding MCC. All very exciting!
