The rarest wine in the Sadie Family Old Vine Series, and the only wine Eben makes from Stellenbosch. The Late Mrs Kirsten owned a tiny 1ha block of Chenin Blanc, planted between 1905 and 1920, and is now regarded as the oldest Chenin Blanc vineyard in South Africa. 

Based in the Jonkershoek Valley at the foot of the Bothamaskop Mountain, this nearly one hundred year old vineyard is slowly dying. Eben has worked with the site for 10 years and nurtures it as carefully as he can but inevitably losing some old vines each year, which are carefully replanted to ensure the rejuvenation of the overall vineyard.

Eben picks early to preserve the fine natural Chenin acidity and then gives the grapes a gentle, but unusual, carbonic maceration to extract richness and oxygen defying compounds, but then ferments the wine conventionally. 

Tasting Note: Pulling the cork on a Sadie wine is a near religious affair now days. Medium straw yellow colour, the nose is effusive with rich honied, pithy orange peel, taught minerality, tangerine peel, peach skins and pithy lemon citrus. Subtle pineapple and waxy, incense laden exotism make this an expansive, complex wine. Medium to full bodied, this profound wine is so rich and textural and intensely focused with fresh acids and wonderful honey suckle, orange peel nuances, and a beautiful chalky mineral wet slate touch. The finish is so long and elegantly powerful, regal, statesmanlike. A wine that challenges your palate, provokes discussion, and inspires your senses. A truly epic once in a lifetime wine experience. 

(Wine Safari Score: 97/100 Greg Sherwood MW)