Bruce Jack Wines Tumbleweed Big Sky Syrah 2024
£12.25
The wine
Big Sky comes from the cool Overberg, inland of the Cape south coast, where the ripening season runs long and the Syrah keeps its lift. Expect the peppery, floral side of the variety rather than the jammy one, with fresh dark fruit and a smooth, unforced finish.
Big Sky comes from the Overberg, a cool inland region east of Cape Town where the elevation and southerly exposure slow ripening considerably. Syrah made in these conditions leans towards pepper, violet and savoury red fruit rather than sweet jam, and holds an acidity that keeps it lively at the table.
The producer
Bruce Jack Wines
View all Bruce Jack Wines winesBruce Jack Wines is a small team built around head winemakers Bruce Jack and Marlize Beyers, who have worked together since 2002 and between them have experience across a great many of the world's wine regions.
The wines are sourced from across the Western Cape rather than from a single estate, which is deliberate: Swartland for old bush-vine Chenin and Syrah, the cooler Overberg and Cape coast for aromatics and acidity, Breedekloof for Viognier. Working that way lets them choose the site that suits each grape instead of forcing everything from one patch of ground.
Tumbleweed is the everyday range and Off the Charts the more adventurous one, taking in skin-contact whites and old-vine parcels. Skin contact means white grapes fermented on their skins as though they were red, which draws out colour, texture and grip; it is one of the oldest methods in winemaking and one of the most fashionable, and the Cape's old Chenin and Clairette vineyards are unusually well suited to it.
