Brookdale Estate has released new vintages of the three white wines under the Brookdale label, crafted by winemaker Kiara Scott Farmer at the young winery on the slopes of the Du Toitskloof Mountains outside Paarl. Under the leadership of the owners, the Rudd family, Brookdale continues breaking down boundaries to define its own path within South Africa’s wine industry.
The new releases include the third vintage of the unique Brookdale Estate Sixteen White Field Blend (2023); the second vintage of the Southern Rhône-style white blend, Brookdale Estate Bradbourne (2023); and the sixth vintage of the flagship Brookdale Estate Old Vine Chenin Blanc (2022).
Brookdale is a proud member of South Africa’s Old Vine Project – a collective of certified heritage vines. At the Trophy Wine Show in 2022, the Brookdale Estate Chenin Blanc 2020 took Gold with a top score of 97/100 placing it first in its category, winning the coveted Rosa Kruger Trophy for best Old Vine Wine.
Brookdale Estate Old Vine Chenin Blanc 2022
The Brookdale Estate Old Vine Chenin Blanc 2022 was produced from vines planted in 1985. The new vintage is described as ‘subtly keyed, with restrained aromatics of pear skin, honeycomb and golden citrus, and just a hint of pastry cream and toast’. The palate is deep, dense and concentrated. Fleshy and generous, tempered by a stony acidity sewn through the layers and layers of flavour. Yellow apples, kumquat and peaches sing while the chalky texture is the background music, giving ballast to all those curves. The savoury finish calls in the wax of the nose, the echo of the radiant fruit. (Cellar door price: R385 per bottle)
Brookdale Estate Bradbourne 2023
The second vintage of Brookdale Estate Bradbourne (2023) is a blend of Grenache Blanc, Piquepoul Blanc, Roussanne and Marsanne, showing rich, open aromatics of honeyed peaches, and glacé pineapple. An undertow of beguiling beurre noisette and hazelnuts, curled through with fresh white roses. The palate is smooth and satiny delivering weight, breadth and length in complete harmony. Racy lime and green apple flash through, balancing the luscious core of stone fruit on the mid-palate, while the finish slowly, slowly unwinds to a stony, monastic purity. (Cellar door price: R385 per bottle)
Brookdale Estate Sixteen White Field Blend 2023
‘The sum is greater than its parts’, is how Brookdale’s owner Tim Rudd explains his passion for the lost art of field blend winemaking, discovered during his travels around Portugal. The third vintage of Brookdale Estate’s Sixteen White Field Blend (2023) is once again totally representative of the vintage it stems from. The tasting notes refer to a kaleidoscopic burst of lifted, diaphanous florals; jasmine, orange blossom and sun-drenched hay. Complex yet so fresh; green apples flow in, with white pear simmering in light. There’s wet stone, a granite dusting, leading to a palate sculpted by an electric current of acidity. Stone fruit coalesces in this energetic structure, peaches and cream, winter melon and lime drops. Tangy and long, quinine and pink grapefruit follow the salt trail to the finish. (Cellar door price: R425 per bottle)
With each harvest, winemaker Kiara Scott Farmer takes an intuitive approach, responding to the growing and harvest conditions to curate the vine which creates the wine, creating room in her winemaking process for the wine to reveal its potential. This means that no two vintages receive the same treatment – there are no formulas and there is no recipe as Kiara prefers to use vintage-specific techniques to allow the grapes of that particular year to showcase their terroir best. She says: ‘Wines like these are largely made in the vineyard and polished in the cellar through minimal invention practices.’
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