Momento Grenache Noir 2021
It felt right to close out the SA Women’s Month interviews with someone much much younger than me. Lauren Segers-Jewell is a brilliant young woman with an unquenchable thirst for wine knowledge. We chatted about her perspective on SA’s future, the youths, imposter syndrome, and her life goals. She’s an absolute gem of a human with an undeniable stoke for wine.
Lauren chose this wine because it is made by her mentor, Marelise Niemann. Lauren worked a harvest with Marelise and cannot wait to taste the '22 vintage which she helped make.
The Wine:
Pale ruby with an orange tinge. Fairly pronounced garrigue, cranberries, red cherries, tart strawberries, a hint of cloves and star anise that blend into the herbaceous fynbos. It’s lifted with a touch of VA. And deepened by umami kelp, light soy, salty clay, and distant dried oyster mushrooms.
Refreshing acidity gives this a lighter feel, steadied by mild grippy tannins that also add to the crunch. Red berries laced with ripe citrus peel lend brightness and make this dangerously sippable...but the tannins, herbals and salty umami prevent it from ever being tutti fruity.
Vini + Viti:
Grenache Noir from low yielding bush-vines grown in decomposed granite soils in the Paardeberg, Swartland.
Marelise uses gentle, minimum intervention to showcase the delicate and elegant side of this grape variety.
The bunches are destemmed into small fermenting tanks with 30% whole clusters, followed by cold soaking for 4 days before natural fermentation starts. Twice daily punch downs by hand ensure gentle extraction. There's a 10 day period of post fermentation maceration. After 4 weeks on the skins (total time), the wine is gently pressed with an old basket press into old Fourdre for malolactic conversion and maturation for 16 months. The wine was bottled in August 2022 without fining.
Marelise says of this variety: 'Grenache has shown its true character through tough times and has not once let me down.'
ALC 12.65 % | PH 3.18 | RS 1.5g/L | TA 6.0 g/L
Final thoughts:
Fun fact: I drink this wine ALL the time but assumed I’d already posted this GN...so my apologies to Marelise for being overly familiar with her wines and popping the empties straight into the recycling 😂! Thanks to Lauren for making me double check...and correcting this wrong!
