Warwick Blue Lady 2020

The wine spent up to 36 days on the skins, depending on the tannin structure, with three or four pump overs per day and then pressed to undergo malolactic fermentation in barrel and tank. After completion, the wine was racked to French oak barrels (36% new oak, 39% second fill, 25% third fill) for a period of 24 months before a strict selection process, where only the best barrels were used. These barrels are blended into tank and filtered before bottling in October 2020.

Three specific blocks of vines were used to produce this wonderful Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon. Hand harvested, de-stemmed and sorted into tank.

This wine will reward cellaring over the next seven to ten years.

100% Cabernet Sauvignon

This wine compliments dry aged coal roasted fillet of beef, with creamy baked potatoes and salt crusted sugar snap peas. Coal roasted whole cauliflower marinated in garlic butter and spiced with nutmeg and roasted pine nuts.

5 star – Platter’s by Diners Club Wine Guide

94 / 100 – Tim Atkin 2023

When people talk about the ‘history’ of a place, they think of the people who lived there, and the personalities who built it. For Warwick Estate, ‘history’ began when the first title deed was issued for the land in 1771. For almost two hundred years, it was a hugely productive fruit farm that served the Cape’s growing pioneer population. It was only in 1964 that the Ratcliffe Family arrived on the scene, and it took winemaker Norma Ratcliffe, alongside her husband Stan, twenty years before they released their first wine. Warwick’s La Femme Bleu Cabernet Sauvignon was released in 1984, after which the estate went on to bottle the first ever ‘Cape Blend’ in the world, won multiple international wine awards, appeared on some of the planet’s most prestigious wine lists, and even became a wine of choice for James Bond in one of his many adventures. In many senses, the Warwick Estate brand that you know today was developed the same way one might nurture a grape vine; through decade upon decade of careful planning, pruning, and persistence.