With the release of our 30th vintage of Hamilton Russell Vineyards Pinot noir, the 2010, we now have both our 30th vintage of Chardonnay (the 2011) and 30th vintage of Pinot noir on the market. This is a real milestone for us and we felt we should offer the wines for direct sale to our South African private customers – with free delivery anywhere within the country. See below this email to purchase.
Luckily, we can celebrate our 30 vintages milestone with two particularly beautiful wines!
Our 2010 Pinot noir is (we believe) one of our very best, with a wonderfully seductive deep, wild berry perfumed nose and the characteristic Hamilton Russell Vineyards spice and tight, long, mineral structure with fine-grained tannins. This is not a soft, simple red fruit forward, varietal expression.
Our 2011 Chardonnay is particularly clean, tight and mineral with a lovely lifted pear and lime fruit perfume. Our alcohol is never high and our 2011 displays the characteristic Hamilton Russell Vineyards dry, complexity and vibrant length without the full “alcohol sweet” tropical fruit and vanilla flavours of so many New World Chardonnays.
The second “tranche” of our vertical of 5 vintages of Pinot noir – 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 – is now available as well. In anticipation of our 30th vintage celebration, we held back a small quantity of each of 5 vintages of Pinot noir. This half-decade of Pinot noir is sold in a wooden box and each wine has a top South African artwork as a back label (to give a visual association to the vintage and not just a number). This vertical is sold 1/5th per year so that there is always something for followers of our Pinot noir and those who want to get closer to the wine. The particular personality of the vintage, the common thread of our terroir and the impact of bottle age can all be experienced with this vertical.
Hamilton Russell Vineyards Pinot noir and Chardonnay have become internationally regarded as two of the “classic wines of the world”. To date we have achieved the highest Pinot noir scores from South Africa in both the Wine Spectator and Robert Parker. In Wine Magazine when readers were (in essence) asked what one wine they would choose from South Africa if given the money, the most votes went to Hamilton Russell Vineyards Pinot noir. Our Chardonnay has been the highest scoring Chardonnay ever in Wine Magazine and Best White Wine of Show seven times at South Africa’s largest consumer show, WineX. It has also received the highest recent scores for South African Chardonnay from both the Wine Spectator and Robert Parker.
While a lot of very hard work (and an ongoing obsession with quality first and foremost), has gone into our 30 years of success with Pinot noir and Chardonnay, we are fully aware that this success has had more to do with the place than the people. Our stony, clay-rich, Bokkeveld Shale-derived soils, northeast facing slopes in the beautiful Hemel-en-Aarde Valley and maximum temperatures significantly moderated by unusually close proximity to the cold Atlantic Walker Bay (at its closest only 1,5 km away), have resulted in remarkably classically styled Pinot noir and Chardonnay in a New World context. This prompted the USgourmet magazine, Saveur, to write us up as “the most Burgundian winery outside Burgundy”.
Hamilton Russell Vineyards only makes one Pinot noir and one Chardonnay – no “reserves” and no second labels. All grapes are grown, vinified and bottled by our team on the Estate. We are proudly Estate Wine of Origin, Hemel-en-Aarde Valley.