Testalonga El Bandito Sweet Cheeks 2024

Country: South Africa
Region: Swartland

‘Sweet Cheeks’ comes from an old bush vine site on the Paardeberg planted in 1952. The name comes from Craig & Carla’s kids, who love to pick sweet berries and eat them with gusto. This is what they consider to be their most fragrant wine. Hanepoot (Muscat d’Alexandrie) is actually a table grape and meant for eating, but they did an experiment in 2013 with skin contact to try and extract the flavour, and it resulted in one of their most refreshing wines to drink. The Afrikaans name, Hanepoot, is thought to be a relic of the Anglo-Boer War at the turn of the 20th century, during which British soldiers nicknamed it “honeypot”, and this may have become “hanepoot” in the local vernacular. It wasn’t until the 1920s that Stellenbosch University professor Abraham Perold definitively proved that Hanepoot and Muscat d’Alexandrie are actually the same grape.

The grapes were hand-harvested and de-stemmed before fermenting spontaneously in stainless steel tanks on the skins. After 10 days, the wine was pressed and sent to old 500L oak casks for full malo and ageing. Sulfur was added a month before bottling. This wine is gently filtered but unfined.