About 5 years ago, we decided to start a new venture in the South African wine industry - Stellenrust gave people the opportunity to stomp their own grapes and make their own wine. We still do this and label wines for the public under their logo.
This eventually lead to the production of the JJ Handmade wines, using no machinery and only the free running juice through gravity flow and of which total production reached about 500 cases. So we converted an old dairy into a boutique cellar where everything works on a gravity basis. Grapes come in at the top of the cellar, are crushed with wooden stomps by the women on the farm and then allowed to ferment naturally. A basket press is used and soft pressure applied to fermented grapes to suck out the essence of the grapes and this juice is then combined with the free running juice from the tanks at the top of the cellar (with gravity flow) to finish fermentation in the barrels and start their ageing process.
These wines are truly HANDMADE and based on the four age-old principles of French wine-making excluding any machinery from production.
Vendange
Foulage a pieds nus
Pressage a la main
Sedementation sous l’effet de la pesanteur