A word from Albert Ahrens
kasteel-neef
Typical Voor-Paardeberg style Red. All my wines are address specific, from a unique terroir or Appellation as the French call it. The Voor-Paardeberg is historically a very old wine region, but in terms of the name its fairly new as a ward on its own. On paper it’s a sub-ward of Paarl, but in reality it’s more on the Swartland side than Paarl… It’s a bit frustrating as a winemaker but that is unfortunately how it is. If BLACK, our Swartland Red, is stylistically comparable to the Northern Rhone, then KASTEEL-NEEF is certainly more Southern Rhone. The main component is Grenache assisted with some Carignan and Syrah for structure.
LABEL ART – KASTEEL-NEEF is done in the flavour profile of each component. Respectively the Grenache is the lighter red, Syrah the darker red and Carignan the darkest colour. The story behind the name lies in the location of the vineyards. This specific area was the halfway-house in the mid 1700’s between the Castle in Cape Town and Tulbagh, the first “in-land” town established in South Africa. This is also how the PAARDEBERG got its name as horses were changed in the Voor-Paardeberg en route to Tulbagh and back. “Paard” is horse in Dutch. Legend has it that a certain “cousin” of the Castle would live at the halfway-house to ensure that proper refreshments were served to the governor and dignitaries during their stop-overs and hence the name KASTEEL-NEEF. “Kasteel” is our direct translation of Castle and “Neef” is cousin. The intent in the label art was to do a castle motive but it turned out to look more like a Chequered Flag, and being a bit of a petrol-head myself I totally loved it!
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