The 2017 Dry Red Wine offers fragrant, open-knit scents of crushed strawberry, maraschino cherries, orange pith and a background scent of potpourri, cohering with aeration. The palate has a well balanced, quite fleshy opening and silky-smooth red fruit. More tender than expected, with a caressing, almost Grenache-like finish. Delicious.

56 % Cabernet Sauvignon, 26% Cinsault, 18% Cabernet Franc. From one parcel of 38-year-old dry-farmed bush-vine Cabernet Sauvignon planted in deep alluvial soils of Stellenbosch; 117-year-old dry-farmed bush-vine Cinsault from the historic Bisson vineyard in Wellington; one parcel from the 95-year-old Lötter vineyard in Franschhoek; and a parcel of high-elevation Cabernet Franc planted on the mid slopes of the Helderberg mountain in Stellenbosch. Grapes were hand-harvested between 11 February and 18 March 2017. Yields vary between 12 and 42 hl/ha. Grapes are cooled and then destemmed into tank. The final blend contains 50% whole-cluster fruit. Minimal SO2 is the only addition. The must is initially punched down once a day. After about four days, fermentation begins without inoculation and the wine is punched down twice a day. Temperatures remain below 28 °C. Fermentation lasts from 7 to 10 days. After fermentation, there's a couple of weeks' skin contact and the wine is then drained and pressed to barrel. The wines are racked and blended mid-way through the year and bottled after 20 months in 500-litre French oak barrels of which 30% are new, and it's then blended into seasoned 2,000-litre foudres for a further eight months. 1,100 cases made. Firm, concentrated and rich on the nose. The one wine of the four Leeu Passant reds I am tasting in this session that does smell and taste recognisably South African. Quite intense floral nose with marked sweetness. Nicely built. Quite punchy with direction and real structure and light tannins. (JR)