Meerlust Merlot, Stellenbosch

Description

Meerlust Merlot is one of South Africa’s classic Merlot wines. It is made at Meerlust Estate, one of the oldest and most prestigious South African Wineries in the Stellenbosch wine region.

Meerlust has a long history and the Myburgh family have been making wine at the estate for eight generations since 1756. Owner Hannes Myburgh (who studied winemaking at Geisenheim, Germany and Chateau Lafite) continues to maintain the family tradition of the art of fine wine-making. The head winemaker since 2004 is Chris Williams, who has worked at Meerlust since 1995. Meerlust consists of 110 hectares of vineyards located 15 kilometres to the south of Stellenbosch and 5 kilometres away from False Bay. The Estate is ideally positioned for the production of characterful and complex wines – there are cooling ocean breezes and evening mists in the summertime which allow the grapes to ripen slowly and thereby gain full, complex, rich and robust varietal characteristics. The soil is similar to those of Bordeaux, it is deep well-draining Hutton and Clovelly soil types (decomposing granite and clay), ideal for wine-growing offering the vines good drought resistance and conditions for producing concentrated, complex wines. The estate is arguably most famous for its Cape Blend, Rubicon.

Meerlust Merlot is produced from 24 year old estate-grown Merlot plantings. The Merlot is planted on clay-rich soils so that the roots can penetrate deep into the soils, looking for the moisture held there by the sponge-like clay from the winter rains and made available to the vine throughout the ripening season. The Cabernet Franc is planted on mainly well-drained, warmer, granite gravel soils and a small Petit Verdot vineyard is planted on north-facing slopes. Grapes are picked by hand and are manually selected prior to crushing. Individual parcels are all fermented separately before undergoing malolactic fermentation in 300 L barrels. After 8 months in barrel, the final components were selected, blended and matured for another 10 months in barrel for harmonization before bottling

Meerlust Merlot 2018 is 86% Merlot, 11% Cabernet Franc and 3% Petit Verdot