“The 2022/23 growing season started with a relatively warm and dry winter, with lots of rain in December. Luckily, we avoided the worst of this, as well as the hail that hit some areas, so we were set for a relatively cool ripening period with a good crop of small berried fruit. The Paardeberg portion was off long before the late February rain started to fall. The Malmesbury portion did hang through one shower of rain, but on balance, I think it was the right decision to push through for a bit more ripeness here and we didn’t see any significant damage from the rain. Chenin Blanc on granite is something that we have worked with for all the years that we have been making our Thorne & Daughters wines, though Cat’s Cradle was only first released in 2017 as a single vineyard wine from the granite soils of the Paardeberg. This year sees the inclusion of the Nuweland parcel from its deep red iron-rich soils. It brings some fruit density and purity to the granite portion which can sometimes be a little austere in its youth. We’ve kept our winemaking simple and natural, as we have no desire to stand between the vineyard and its expression as a wine in the glass. The grapes are wholebunch pressed in an old basket press and there are no additions of sulphur dioxide made on the juice. A rough settling follows pressing after which the wines undergo natural alcoholic and malolactic fermentation in old oak barrels. We add some sulphur dioxide late in the winter, and then again at bottling, keeping the level of sulphur dioxide as low as possible. The result is wines that show tension without losing their suppleness and core, and wines that will reward time in the cellar.”