The Last of the First Pinotage offers a truly unique wine drinking experience. Its luminescent dark cherry colour is combined with aromas of sour cherries, earthy, and savoury notes, creating an exquisite balance. Finely integrated tannins thread throughout the wine, ensuring a memorable drinking experience. This wine can be consumed now and with its definition of fruit, structure and alcohol can be aged for around 10 years.

Delight in the Last of the First Pinotage, a delectable red wine with a harmonious balance of flavours. The ideal choice for a memorable evening, its luscious, oaky notes are the perfect accompaniment for savoury duck dishes.

Vineyard and Winery

Pinotage is a created grape with the credit going to Professor Perold’s*. It was propagated at Elsenburg College in 1935. In 1941 Myrtle Grove on the Schapenberg was chosen for the first commercial plantings. Today only one block remains on the Schapenberg - The Last of The First. Completely different in style to inland Pinotage. Elegant, perfumed, graceful - pinotage as it was originally intended?

The area where these grapes are planted is a Registered Single Vineyard, a small and singular parcel of mature, dryland farmed bush vine Pinotage measuring just 1.3 hectares and planted back in 1994. Now the last of its kind to be found on the maritime slopes of the Schapenberg, where the original commercial plantings of Pinotage took place. This rare little block sits just 6km from False Bay on a steep, elevated and cooler slope. Soils are stony and well-drained and therefore low-vigour. However, they are also blessed with a deep red/yellow clay sub-soil enabling good moisture retention, which is essential on the Schapenberg as this hillside has the lowest rainfall in Stellenbosch. Due to these low vigour soils, a lack of irrigation, incessant wind and the eschewal of synthetic fertilisers the berry-size and yield are tiny at just over 1.8tons/ha or 11hl/ha. Good things really do often come in small packages and the upside here is healthy grapes with excellent balanced concentration.

The approach is natural and simple, yet also rigorous and labour-intensive. Organically farmed, handpicked and hand sorted by the team at False Bay Vineyards. Fermented whole bunch with wild yeast in a small open top oak fermenter with manual punch downs during fermentation. Left on the skins and stems for 31 days before being pressed off in a basket press and transferred to one old 600 litre and two 225L barrels for a maturation period of 24 months before bottling without fining and only the lightest of filtrations. Minimal SO2 added with no further additions. Only 1400 bottles made.

*Prof Abraham Izak Perold. His academic achievements included a B.A. in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, a Ph.D in Chemistry, and a temporary professorship in Chemistry at the University of Cape Town. This background equipped him with a unique skill set and after a professional stint in Cape government, he decided to extend the range of grapes planted in the region. He became the first professor of Viticulture at the University of Stellenbosch internationally recognised as one of the places to study all things wine related.