Fresh mouth filling cherry and red berry fruit supported by supple, savoury and mineral oak tannins. In 1996, Cathy Marshall decided to have a braai for her friends. The party turned into something of a breakthrough evening when they decided to crush some grapes that she had bought, barefooted in her garage. Nine months later the original party gathered again to bottle the wine by hand.
Barefoot is now known as BMC wines, and by 1998 Cathy was handling 16 tonnes of grapes rather than the original one tonne. However, the annual harvest ritual of the 'footstomp bash' continues, but the wine is now made in the 'high tech' wineries of Amani and Yonder Hill.
The company does not own vineyards, but sources the grapes from some of the best vineyards to make top quality wines. This is in the tradition of the French 'negociants' -- with a South African flavour.
BMC wines are terrific to drink and the bottles provide a classic backdrop to any table with the disctinctive and stylish label, a unique collaboration with artist Hannetjie de Clercq.
This wine is made from a combination of grapes from Stellenbosch, Elgin and Darling. The Bunches were in excellent condition with firm acidity and tannins, while the vine and seed phenolic ripeness was in balane with sugar ripening.
Once in the winery de-stemming with no crushing resulted in whole berry component at about 80%. The mash was then cold soaked for two days at 12 degrees, then inoculated with commercial yeast. A series of punch-downs and pump-overs was undertaken during fermentation for colour and flavour extraction.
The wine was then pressed and gravity fed to a combination of first, second and third fill barrels. Next the wine was matured in 225l French oak for 11 months and finally a light filtration for clarification into bottle was completed.
