Riesling Rocks at Hartenberg

The Riesling Rocks Festival is held on Hartenberg Wine Estate every year at about this time and included some of the best Rhine Rieslings being produced in South Africa. We did wonder why Jordan and Paul Cluver who both produce excellent examples of this varietal, were missing this year and hope they will attend next time

It was an absolutely perfect summer’s day. Nice and warm but not overwhelmingly hot, with a cool breeze and no sign of a South Easter. Well not until much, much later in the afternoon. 

This lass is cellarmaster Carl Schultz’s daughter, Michelle

There were 9 farms represented and we started with Jessica Saurwein on the Klein Constantia stand. Their Riesling is very dry with no residual sugar showing at all.

Lots of tables and cushions and blankets under the shady trees make for a great tasting and there was also good food to purchase for lunch. We were very kindly supplied with a delicious duck salad with orange slices and a cheese platter with Dalewood cheeses

Bennie Stipp Is the Marketing manager for de Wetshof wines in Robertson and their Riesling seemed to be the most popular one of the day, if one listened to what people were saying. It certainly is one of ours, and is full of crisp limes and lemons with lots of depth. It is off dry, with 20gm/litre of sugar, but the acid balances the sugar so well, that it is almost dry on the palate. Very refreshing too and a good food wine

Our other favourites were the fragrant and delicious and quite complex Groote Post and while it is completely different in style to all the others, showing much more of the rose petal characteristics, we loved the Altydgedacht

None of these show signs of heavy or heady terpenes

The wines are served from a barrel top and here are all the farms in a row, so you can walk up and down tasting and then retire to a table in the shade for something to eat and drink

The Hartenberg stand saw lots of happy tasters for their excellent Rieslings and they also treated us to some older vintages, as did some of the other farms

We met someone fairly new in the wine trade on the Nitida stand. Faith Pienaar, originally from Johannesburg, is studying Oenology at Stellenbosch University, but is on an internship at Nitida over harvest time.  She has great character and is already fairly knowledgeable about wine. We think she has a great future in the industry

This is also a day for the family to enjoy and there were some delightful children to watch at play.

Now we wait for the next Hartenberg festival, which should be the Shiraz & Charcuterie festival in June

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus  2014