BLANKBottle Jaa-Bru 2023

“Jaaaa Bru?” is South African slang for “Yes, my brother?” and this is the warm way I get greeted every time I phone Alex Starey, the farmer who farms this vineyard. Jaaaa Bru, a 100% Malbec. It grows on the slopes of the Helderberg Mountain – not facing the ocean as one might expect, but rather Stellenbosch, making these vineyards quite unique. Malbec is a strange-looking grape when it’s ripe. When we pick, it always appears unripe. The berries are soft and juicy and the flesh is green in colour. We ferment this wine without any stems and age it in older French Oak barrels for less than a year. It produces an extracted, yet fresh and complex wine. Phonetically speaking, if you translate “Malbec” from Afrikaans to English, it literally means “crazy mouth”.  And that was quite clearly the inspiration behind the label.