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Beltramo's Wines & Spirits
1540 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA 94025

Monday-Friday: 10:00am-7:30pm
Saturday: 9:30am-7:30pm
Sunday: 10:00am-6:30pm

(650) 325-2806
(888) 710-WINE(9463)
Fax (650) 323-8450

2007 Stark-Conde Cabernet Sauvignon Three Pines Jonkershoek Valley
"A brilliant little operation this, one of the Cape's brightest young stars, in a very cool area indeed, the Jonkershoek Valley. UK winewriter Jancis Robinson recently singled out the Condé Cab as one of her favourites; 5-star ratings for both its Cabs have been notched up in this guide within a couple of years; US Wine Spectator has rated them 90-plus. All this when the wines were being fashioned in an old farm house. Now graphic designer-become winemaker José Condé has revamped his winery, to achieve 'more control, better quality'. There will be 'no compromise', he adds."
John Platter South African Wines

Stark-Condé Wines is a family-run winery making hand-crafted wines using tried-and true traditional methods. Our total production is less than 3000 cases, making us one of South Africa's few true boutique wineries. Meticulous viticulture, selected harvesting, grape-sorting, small-batch fermenting, careful barrel maturation; these are our guiding philosophies. We are trying to make carefully crafted wines that speak with personality of a particular place. All of our wines are made from grapes from our own "Oude Nektar" farm vineyards in Jonkershoek Valley in Stellenbosch. In addition to being viticulturally ideal, they are also pretty spectacular visually! Vineyard elevation range from between 200 to 500 metres above sea level and we have a range of aspects which give us a correspondingly broad range of fruit characteristics. Vineyard Brands Importer

Details of vinification and oaking:
This wine is based on our best block of cabernet. This block has deep well-drained decomposed granite soils with a clay sub-soil and a gentle Southwest-facing slope. The wines made from this vineyard (including our single-vineyard Syrah) always seem to have good ripeness coupled with good natural acidity and a unique floral note that sets it apart from our other blocks of cabernet. There are five different clones within the block, but I usually focus on just three that have quite different characters: clone 46 which is well structured, but with less forward fruit; clone 27 which varies from vintage, but tends to have a firm tannin; and clone 163 which is quite fruit forward. The grapes for this wine were hand-harvested in late-March. They were picked into small lug boxes and cooled overnight in a refrigerated container to about 14 degrees C., then de-stemmed and carefully hand-sorted and crushed into small open fermentation vats and cold-soaked for 2-3 days until natural fermentation started. The following day they were inoculated with a mix of yeasts, half with a South African strain and the other half with an imported Bordeaux yeast. About 20% of the wine was fermented with natural yeasts. Regular, vigorous punchdowns were given every 2-4 hours for the first half of fermentation, then every 6-8 hours thereafter. The wine was basket pressed and racked directly to barrel for malo-lactic fermentation and subsequent barrel maturation. A mix of coopers was used, all French oak, all 300 litre, about 70% new and the balance second-fill. The wine was bottled without fining or filtration after 22 months barrel maturation.
92 points Wine Spectator:
SKU: 04220
Your Price: $35.99
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