2023 Van Loggerenberg "Breton" Stellenbosch Cabernet Franc

The name ‘Breton’ is from the old French name in the Loire Valley for Cabernet Franc. Lukas and Roxanne chose this name as it was while on a trip to the Loire that they decided to create Van Loggerenberg Wines. The silhouette of the woman symbolizes the elegance of Cabernet Franc and is emphasized again by the Percheron horse. This breed is always perceived as this rough brute of a horse but Lukas finds elegance in its sturdiness, which is quite similar to Cabernet Franc. The bluegum tree represents the original block of the Carinus’ ‘Bluegum Grove Vineyard’, which was the first vineyard Lukas sourced and continues as a core of the wine today. In order to grow the production, Lukas poked around for additional Cabernet Franc in the Polkadraai and got the ‘in’ for the Klein Welmoed vineyard on the southern reaches of the Polkadraai. The resulting wine is unequivocally one of the world’s great examples of this historically maligned but now revered grape. The 2023 vintage saw some rain around harvest time, but all of Lukas’ reds were in the cellar before the rains came.

The grapes were hand harvested and then a quarter of the lots remained as whole-bunches while the rest was de-stemmed and sent to stainless steel tanks. One afternoon punchdown was the only method of extraction and this was done over the course of two weeks for the whole cluster portion and an additional two weeks beyond that for the de-stemmed lot, adding resulting depth to the mid-palate. After 9 weeks total, the lots were then pressed directly to older 500L French oak barrels where malolactic fermentation occurred naturally. After ten months of aging the barrels were blended and immediately bottled without fining or filtration.