Description
This excellent vintage has yielded a truly impressive wine for the Vilafonte team. Displaying a brilliant and intense ruby and red plum hue, the aromatics are expansive and hedonistic sending notes of violets and crushed red cherries, raspberries and rose petals soaring out the glass with confidence and vigour. Fabulously complex and intricate, attractive notes of wild berries and red currant follow to the dense full bodied palate that boasts a broad seductive array of licorice and black plum, cocoa powder and brown toast crusts. The Malbec and Merlot are like a marriage made in heaven, offering svelte supple tannins and a texture that wraps its arms around you in the most comforting embrace. With time in the glass, the fleshy palate shows nuances of baked plums, blue berries and red cherries all underpinned by viral fresh acids. This is most definitely one of the most powerful, potent and heady wines produced in the Series M range to date. An impressively ample fine wine with an assertive personality. Drink this in its youth or cellar for 20+ years. 97/100 Greg Sherwood MW
Producer Information: Vilafonté
Vilafonté is the vision of the three founding partners - Mike Ratcliffe, Zelma Long and Dr. Phil Freese. Through the collaboration of these three leading industry figures, Vilafonté (which was founded in 1996) became the first American and South African joint wine-making venture, and these days is considered one of the most pioneering wineries in South Africa.
The 42 hectare estate sits on the bench of the Simonsberg Mountains with its unique vilafontes soils. It is from these unique soils – which are between 750,000 and 1.5 million years old – that the winery derives its name. The first vineyards were planted in 1998 followed by a smaller section being planted in 1999. Vilafonté’s wines are exclusively produced from grapes grown on its own property, where the Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Malbec grapes predominate.
Vilafonté produces two main wines from its premium vineyard site. Series C takes its name from being a Cabernet dominant style. A blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Malbec, this is a firm, powerfuland concentrated wine, rich in fruit at release and intended for long ageing. Merlot and Malbec dominate the style of the Series M, a wine that is sensuous with a firm structure for ageing with afleshy yet soft texture.
The recently second label is Seriously Old Dirt. The Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec grapes used to produce this blend are sourced from Vilafonté’s vineyards’ younger vines.
