City on the Hill Muscat d’Alexandrie 2020
Insert praise hands 🙌🏾, deep nods, and a big grin.
This is Muscat is Mother Trucking delicious (I was recently reprimanded for cussing so I’m trying ).
The Wine:
Medium lemon with a pronounced nose of honeysuckle, orange blossoms, beeswax, honey, nutmeg, cinnamon, cumin (in the empty glass sniff), grapes, lychees, and some interesting briny reduction fresh out of the bottle.
Dry (but you will waste time questioning what your nose is telling you), medium acidity/alcohol/body, and a medium(+) finish. It’s bright, with juicy ripe lemons and honeyed subtle tropical fruits at first...and as you swallow these give way to lingering salinity, almonds, and burned sugar with just a trace of the tropical notes.
Vini + Viti:
Muscat d'Alexandrie (Hanepoot) dryland bush vines planted in the Swartland in the 1980's. The grapes are picked earlier to restrain their pronounced aromatics and retain acidity, but maintain their structure and weight.
The juice spends 7 days in contact with the skins to enhance the mouthfeel. The wine is then pressed and fermentation is completed in barrel.
Final thoughts:
I found this wine hard to describe. It is pretty and delicate, but the salinity and slightly weightier feel give this some seriousness. Mostly, it just slips down so easily that it was annoying to have to stop and assess the wine. Which, in my opinion, is the mark a very good wine. And just in case we’ve forgotten...this is Muscat!! Love what they’ve done with this grape!
Find the Wine:
www.cityonahillwine.co.za but I picked this up from Wine Cellar.