Testalonga El Bandito Skin Contact 2017/18 (Orange Wine)

Testalonga El Bandito Skin contact, organic orange wine, elegant, fresh, fascinating. The skin contact from Craig Hawkins is evolving into a much more elegant style of orange wine. Less skin contact time and maturation leads to a fresher style, paler colour and a more elegant wine. The 2017 is delightfully light and sappy, notes of citrus fruits, red apple, and subtle herbs with just a sniff of classic Chenin Blanc honey. Close your eyes, it could be white wine, very delicious.

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.