SoetKaroo Estate Wins Michelangelo Wine Award

- Linda Jaquet -

SoetKaroo Wine Estate’s 2008 Red Muscat d’Alexandrie was awarded a Silver Medal at this year’s 2008 Michelangelo International Wine Awards competition held in September outside Stellenbosch. The panel of international judges used the 100 point system - the Silver Medal was awarded for wines scoring 86-92 points.

With the previous vintages sold out (with the exception of some of the 2007 Reserve Carafes) the Perolds bottled the award-winning wine in July. Then during September they bottled this year’s blend of Touriga Nacional and Petit Verdot – the popular port-like dessert wine first made in 2007. It is almost inky black in colour and Susan calls it her ‘Mafia wine’, as opposed to the ‘Pink One’ or Red Hanepoot, the Red Muscat d’Alexandrie.

The little Garagiste enterprise (i.e. operated from the garage) at 56 Kerk Street is registered by SAWIS, the South African wine regulatory authority, as “a unit for the production of estate wine”, in other words, a cellar that makes wine from its own grapes and also bottles on its own premises. And, no, SoetKaroo is NOT the smallest wine estate in South Africa - it is, however, definitely the largest in the main road of Prince Albert!

Herman cultivates the vineyard of 3000 vines for low yield and maximum quality fruit. The annual production of wine is limited not so much by the quantity of grapes grown, as by the bulkiness of the packaging, the pallets of bottles and cartons for putting them in. These take up an inordinate amount of physical space, before use, as well as when filled with the bottled product. After all, the house at no 56 was designed for people to live in, not as a winery shed…