Linton Park Wine Estate, situated at the foot of the beautiful Groenberg mountains outside Wellington near Cape Town, walked away with top honours at the Novare SA Terroir Wine Awards for the ‘Best MCC’ produced in South Africa. The prestigious award ceremony took place at Anura Wine Estate near Paarl.

Linton Park Estate’s Chief Winemaker JG Auret receives the 2018 SA Novare Terroir Wine Award for South Africa’s best MCC from Elize Botha of Novare

Herman le Roux, commercial director, commented: ”This esteemed competition with its stringest criteria for judging the different SA wine types according to their terroir specific origin, confirms that this is a well-deserved recognition for our wine-making team’s ability to consistently craft exceptional Chardonnays. I am proud to say that this award follows in the double gold achieved for Linton’s 2016 Chardonnay at the 2017 Michelangelo Awards.”

Why Linton’s Chardonnay Success?

JG Auret, the estate’s prize-winning chief winemaker, a proud but modest craftsman in the cellar, revealed some viticultural details of Linton Park’s success with their Chardonnays. He said: “The valley and emerald green mountainous slopes of the majestic Groenberg Mountains, overlooking Wellington with views as far as Table Mountain, offer us several diverse microclimates in which our vineyards are sited and which we optimise to cultivate exceptional wines.”

He elaborated: “Our Chardonnay blocks are sited primarily on decomposed granite soils. Supplementary irrigation is undertaken as needed. The Estate range grapes are handpicked at dawn on harvest days to keep the grapes cool for vinification. Our Chardonnay vines are grown in some of the highest and thus coolest blocks on the Estate. These range from 300m to just on 510m above sea level, while our Pinot Noir grapes are grown at 450m.”

Linton Park’s award-winning Brut MCC with its striking packaging

Product description of MCC Brut

JG described the award-winning MCC Brut as follows: “Raised in the bottle for 30 months, this delightfully dry and graceful Methodé Cap Classique was made in the traditional French method. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir feature in the blend with clear citrus notes on both nose and palate. Zesty bubbles bounce from glass to mouth as the wine delivers a lingering aftertaste. The blend of the wine is made up of 90% Chardonnay and 10% Pinot Noir”. JG also paid tribute to Matthew Krone (well known in MCC circles) for his contribution in fine-tuning the wine.

New Chardonnay Innovation

Good news for all Chardonnay fans is that Herman also indicated that JG and his team have further experimented with the potential of the estate’s quality Chardonnays. The new 2017 wild-fermented Linton Park Chardonnay is available now.