Sakkie Mouton Family Wines Dawn of the Salty Tongues Syrah 2024 Rated and Reviewed…
This is the third red release from Sakkie Mouton, one of the Cape’s most exciting winemaking talents who seems to keep going from strength to strength. With a now well-established quality track record for his crisp, complex, saline white wines from the Weskus, his wines have become incredibly sought after including his red wines.
Simply speaking, you can sell a cultish brand once, maybe twice, but if it doesn’t deliver the quality collectors and connoisseurs expect that’s where it will break down. Sakkie’s followers are however true converts, buying and drinking his wines vintage after vintage, standing as a true testament to the authentic character and ever-increasing quality of his wines.
The Dawn of the Salty Tongues label is a reference to the rise of the West Coast as a new wine region and showcases divers picking grapes under the ocean, which contributes to the “salty” taste of the palate. “Salty Tongues” also happens to be Weskus slang for the rather spicy language some of the local farmers and fishermen are known to use on a regular basis!
Sakkie Mouton Family Wines Dawn of the Salty Tongues Syrah 2024, WO Oliphants Rivier, 12.86% Abv.
2.6g/l RS | 6.1g/l TA | 3.40pH
The Salty Tongues Syrah 2024 is a 100% Syrah red made from grapes sourced from vineyards in Vredendal located 25 kilometres from the West Coast Atlantic Ocean that were picked early morning to preserve freshness before being destemmed, with 30% of whole bunches lining the bottom of the open top fermenters. After fermentation, the wine was aged for 12 months in 500 litre barrels before being bottled unfiltered and unfined. Planted in 1999, these 26-year-old vineyards are starting to yield some incredible quality with striking aromatics of pressed violets and lavender, bramble berries and pomegranate before hints of black cherry, blood oranges, nori seaweed and bloody raw meat develop. This 2024 shows more dry extract, more substance, and more depth of fruit and oak spice than either of the previous two vintages. With incredible elegance, vivacious tangy acids and a silky plush depth, the palate never loses its mouthwatering red and black berry Weskus salinity that gently melts away into a concentrated, intense, piercing finish. This is a beautifully crafted red wine from Sakkie. Drink on release and over the next 8 to 10 years.
(Wine Safari Score: 96/100 Greg Sherwood MW)