Celebrate Simonsvlei’s Success

   Three More Reasons to Celebrate Simonsvlei’s Success

With three quality awards received in less than three months, Simonsvlei has started the spring season in style. Hard work fuelled by a passion to excel and a consistent focus on quality and innovation, have all attributed to the cellar’s latest successes.

In-line with Simonsvlei’s current Achiever Campaign, you will not find words like mediocrity, complacency and laissez-faire in this company’s dictionary. Constantly keeping its eye on the wine market’s and on its customers’ distinct needs, ensures that the cellar, time and again, produces premium quality wines at affordable prices.

Simonsvlei is blessed with the ideal terroir, infrastructure and expertise to consistently produce excellent quality Chenin Blanc and Shiraz wines. The recent awards at Michelangelo and Paarl Vintner’s Chenin Blanc Challenge serve to underline this rare ability.

Early August, Simonsvlei’s Classic Range Premier Chenin Blanc (bush vine) won the “People’s Choice Award” at Paarl Vintner’s Chenin Blanc Challenge. In the words of Kobus Louw, Managing Director: “The market has spoken and it shows that this wine’s style is spot-on for the South African and International wine drinker.” This specific wine produced berries with the typical Chenin flavours of guava, pineapple and Bon Chrétien pear.

Following this award, another award was won, this time by a consistent achiever from Simonsvlei’s wine stable, the thoroughbred Hercules Paragon 2004 Shiraz. This wine has won last year’s Shiraz Challenge and struck gold again in September, at the 2007 Michelangelo International Wine Awards. This means that, for three years in a row, the 2002, 2003 and 2004 Hercules Paragon Shiraz has won gold medals at the awards! The Shiraz is a full-bodied wine with smokey raspberry/black cherry bouquet and hints of white pepper and spicy, leathery undertones. The wine was fermented on skins for 7 – 12 days, after which the skins were pressed and the wine inoculated with malolactic bacteria to initiate a secondary fermentation. The malolactic fermentation took place in small bariques. On completion, the wines were racked and aged for 12 – 18 months in French and American bariques. The wine was given only one coarse filtration prior to bottling.

Last but not least, following on the heels of its selection as Woolworths Wine Supplier of the Year 2006, Simonsvlei received, once again, another award from this leading South African retailer, namely the trophy for Supplier of the Year for Technical Advancement in Foods. Tanya de Goede, Simonsvlei’s Quality Manager, attributes this award to “following a philosophy of ‘keeping to the basics’ of quality management”. In 2003 Simonsvlei became the first company in South Africa, at first attempt, to qualify for the three coveted International Certification bodies at the same time: ISO 9001: 2000 – Quality Management System; SABS 0330: HACCP – Implementation of a Food Safety System; and BRC: British Retail Consortium for producers supplying retailer branded foods. This year, Simonsvlei has once again, with an A-grading, adhered to HACCP and BRC’s strict international standards. Tanya concludes: “Receiving this certification, proves that Simonsvlei produces its wines under controlled and safe conditions, meaning that we consistently delivers products of exceptional quality.”

DJ Malherbe

Simonsvlei

21 September 2007

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