Craven Cinsault

Craven Wines is a winemaking collaboration between husband-and-wife team Mick and Jeanine Craven.  Mick is an Aussie currently working as lead winemaker at Mulderbosch during the day;  Jeanine is South African, and they met in California 'dragging hoses' in Sonoma for harvest in 2007.  After both having taken to the text books at their respective universities, they decided to hit the road, see lots of things, work in lots of places and try and learn as much as possible from this massive wine world.  After travelling across the world together for four years and learning about wines in Australia, Europe, the States and South America, the couple returned to South Africa in late 2011.  They feel Stellenbosch has such an amazing array of sites and terroir, and that it is perfect for what they want to do, which is making site-specific, honest wines.

"Rustenhof, a site in the coastal Faure district of Stellenbosch, is farmed by Pieter Bredell. I’ve never seen a site quite this healthy; their cover crops of radishes (to break up the soil introducing oxygen and relieving compaction) and fava beans (natural nitrogen fixers) were thriving. It is planted on sandy granite so close to the ocean you can feel the salty breeze. These bush-vines are dry farmed and tend to yield grapes with higher acid than their previous vineyard. They destem the grapes to help preserve acidity. The pump-over or punch-down twice a day during fermentation and then press of to neutral puncheon for élevage." - Erik Mercier, Juice Imports