Testalonga Baby Bandito Chin Up Cinsault 2021

Testalonga Baby Bandito Chin Up Cinsault, full of character with juicy red cherry, liquorice and strawberry and just a very subtle hint of white pepper. Low alcohol at 11.5% and delicate in colour, yet still complex enough to stand up to a spiced Thai salad I ate while drinking this Cinsault. Very natural in taste and easy drinking. Would also be delicious chilled.

Craig says:’Baby Bandito is a project we started in 2015. We wanted to work with vineyards that deliver wines that can be drunk young yet still “over deliver” in quality one would expect from our most affordable wine. There was a heavy influence from street artists (the good ones, not just your drunk student defacing someone’s wall, unless it was good) in the labels and the idea of a “series” using different and bright colours. The names of the wines come from expressions that we use as if giving encouragement to a child. Chin Up is the most recent addition. The photograph was taken by my brother Mark (with permission) whilst on holiday in Vietnam.’

‘ Planted in 1981, bush vine (un-trellised and dryland), farmed organically. This is a 3ha block on the farm of Rick Mcgrindle. It yields large but delicate grapes with thin skins of a pale complexion. However in 2018 due to the extreme drought we had the crop was tiny and berries also smaller than usual which meant vinification needed to be more gentle than ever.’ The final wine is excellent quality with great concentration and freshness.

Craig Hawkins is a young winemaker based in the Swartland, South Africa, where he rents about 11ha of vineyard.

Having travelled extensively throughout Europe, and then worked as wine maker for Lammershoek, he now makes makes a huge variety of different wines under his own Testalonga label. Each vintage is experimental and we think they're getting better each year. These are beautiful natural hand-crafted wines from low yielding vines, wild ferments and nothing added except a little SO2 at bottling in some but not all the wines.