Pinot Noir 2022, Tesselaarsdal, South Africa

You can't hide with Pinot Noir. If you treat it well, it will repay you with complexity and beauty. And this is beautiful - light and ethereal. It has been treated very well by Berene Sauls, who has worked for many years at Hamilton Russel (starting as an au pair and now in operations) and this is her side hustle. What a hustle. With fruit from the Hemel-en-Aarde ridge, it is so pure and pristine. 

Berene named her label after the historic Overberg farming hamlet of Tesselaarsdal, where she was born, a descendant of the freed slaves who were bequeathed the land of the Tesselaarsdal valley by former Dutch East India Company soldier Johannes Tesselaar’s widow in 1832. If you look closely at the label, you can make out two people walking across the mountain. This is Berene and her grandmother.