Thorne & Daughters Tin Soldier Semillon 2021

Thorne and Daughters Wines was started in 2012 by John and Tasha Seccombe to produce authentic wines in the beautiful Western Cape where we have made our home. It has been a long journey that has taken us around the world and brought us back here to where we first met. We love the Cape, and we want to taste this air and this sunshine in our wines. To produce our wines we’ve drawn on the great history of wine growing here in South Africa, putting together old vineyard parcels with new grape varieties, and making wines with old school simplicity and a modern ‘edge’. Our approach to wine making is simple, honest and gentle, and we are looking to make wines that tell a story of the Cape of Good Hope.

Tin Soldier is a skin-fermented wine made from Semillon gris, which is almost unique to South Africa, and a vestige of a time when Semillon was the grape on which the South African wine industry was built. The vineyard has been established from a sélection massale of Semillon gris cuttings taken from an adjacent vineyard of Semillon that was planted in 1964.

The colour of the wine is unusual, having taken some bright copper tones from about a week’s fermentation on skins. We continually aim to improve on our winemaking, and patience at picking time has allowed us to pick wines just that little bit riper and more complex without losing the elegance that this vineyard produces.

The interplay between savoury and sweet is a key point of interest in Tin Soldier, and makes for a subtle and engaging wine.