Bruce Jack Wines Tumbleweed Wild Merlot 2025
£9.95
The wine
The Swartland's warm climate and weathered soils shape this elegant Merlot, featuring vibrant red berry flavours, a whisper of herbs and soft, supple tannins. Subtle oak adds depth to the silky, refined finish.
Merlot in the Swartland is not the obvious pairing, since the region is better known for Rhône varieties and Chenin, but wild fermentation and restrained handling give a savoury, plum-fruited red rather than a soft commercial one. The Swartland's granite and shale soils and dry-farmed vines keep yields naturally low.
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.
