Crystallum Peter Max Pinot Noir 2025
£27.95
The wine
Red cherry, cranberry, rose and damson. The palate is layered, with fine grippy tannins and depth.
Peter Max is named for Peter-Allan Finlayson and his brother Max, and it blends fruit across the estate sites rather than bottling one, which makes it the clearest picture of the house style. Hemel-en-Aarde means heaven and earth, a cool valley behind Walker Bay a few kilometres from the Atlantic, and it has become South Africa most convincing Pinot Noir country.
The producer
Crystallum
View all Crystallum winesCrystallum is one of South Africa's most acclaimed producers of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, a small family winery led by the gifted Peter-Allan Finlayson. Based in the cool Hemel-en-Aarde valley near the Atlantic, it has become a benchmark for elegant, Burgundian-inspired Cape wine. Its reputation has grown swiftly.
The focus is on cool-climate sites across the southern Cape, from the clay and shale of Hemel-en-Aarde to the limestone of the Overberg. These maritime vineyards, fanned by ocean breezes, give fruit of freshness and tension. Careful, low-intervention farming underpins the wines.
In the cellar, whole-bunch ferments, wild yeasts and restrained oak shape wines of purity and finesse. The Chardonnays are taut and mineral, the Pinot Noirs fragrant and silky, always favouring elegance over weight. Terroir speaks clearly.
From the widely loved Peter Max Pinot to the single-vineyard Clay Shales, Crystallum offers South Africa at its most refined. Cool, mineral and beautifully balanced, these are Cape wines of genuine world class.
