Exclusive to The Wine Society

Midnight Bakkie

Technical Information:

Producer:	Pixel Face
The Wine:	91% Chenin Blanc 9% Roussanne
Vintage:	2014
Wine of Origin:	Western Cape
Alcohol:	14%
Bottles:	8,400 bottles

Not all those who wander are lost. – JRR Tolkien

Ever been to the Skurfberg? Few people have. Its remoteness and altitude suggest that one might as well be harvesting on the surface of the moon.

No less than a five hour drive from the cellar and six hours back (in order to ‘protect the integrity of the fruit’), it took no less than five round-trips to pick these grapes; low-yielding, old vine chenin, trucked from the farm of a man called Jozua, whose vineyards have recently gained an almost mythical significance in the Cape.

It’s from this grower that 87% of our Midnight Bakkie was sourced.

But the winter of 2013 was wet and cold and our pixel-faced winemaker didn’t factor the potential increase in the crop from 2.5 to 4.5 tonnes per hectare. Purchasing his grapes by the hectare (rather than conventionally by the tonne), this boy-wonder was caught on the hop. Flavour-wise, the grapes were perfect but, with almost twice as much fruit as expected, the concentration these vineyards usually deliver was not quite there. Conceding that all of the resulting wine was unlikely to make the cut for his grand vin, he knew he needed to maak ‘n plan…

Blended with a single-barrel component of old vine Darling chenin and a healthy dollop of first-crop roussanne from the Hemel-en-Aarde, the outcome is virtually extra-terrestrial…

Afrikaans Lesson #53:
Bakkie: A pick-up truck.

Afrikaans Lesson #1:
Maak ‘n plan: The first lesson to be learned in Afrikaans language: how to make a plan…