2020 Atlas Swift Shelter Cabernet Sauvignon

Atlas Swift is the winery where the premium wines of Martin & Welma Smith from Franschhoek are made. Martin is the winemaker and is known for his work for Pasarene. Their specialty is terroir driven wines and this is also the reference to Atlas which is a reference to the different maps, or terroirs, where the vines grow. The Shelter Chardonnay is a real Terroir wine, so soil, location, but certainly also the climatic conditions of a particular vintage determine the wine and (fortunately) no attempt is made to make it uniform.

The 2020 vintage was a better vintage compared to 2019 thanks to favorable conditions such as sufficient water for irrigation and relatively moderate temperatures during ripening. Only the healthiest berries from hand-harvested grapes ended up in the Atlas Swift Shelter. These grapes go into small open top fermenters where they were fermented on the skins. During fermentation, transfers were carried out twice a day to extract the ripe round tannins and the maximum amount of color pigment. To ensure that the fruit remains the primary focus, the wine was matured in 3rd and 4th fill French oak barrels to limit the influence of oak-derived characters. In the glass, this red Shelter Cabernet Sauvignon has a deep ruby red color with the typical Cabernet aromas of tomato leaf, cassis, bouquet garni and a touch of graphite, but also raspberry and plum fruit characters. The tannins are well integrated and on the palate the wine is medium bodied with delicate flavors of plum and blackcurrant and fresh herbs in the dry finish.

FACT: In the Tab: Appendix you will find the official fact sheet of this beautiful wine. We will send it to you automatically when you order this wine. The wine is in our conditioned Wine Warehouse and if you pick up the wine you will also receive a nice discount. You will see your discount immediately when you choose Collect in the Checkout page. We are almost next to the Rijksweg with plenty of parking. Click here for our address.

About Atlas Swift

ATLAS: In Greek mythology, Atlas sided with the Titans when they fought the Olympians during the Titanomachy, a series of battles between these two generations that lasted ten years. When the Titans were defeated, many of them were imprisoned in Tartarus, a deep abyss used as a dungeon of torment and a prison for the Titans. However, Zeus, the leader of the Olympians and the god of thunder and the sky, condemned Atlas to stand on the western edge of the earth and hold the sky on his shoulders forever. A common misconception today is that Atlas was forced to hold the Earth on his shoulders, but classical art shows Atlas holding the celestial bodies, not the globe. This was reinforced in the 16th century by the developing use of 'atlas' to describe a corpus of terrestrial maps. For Atlas Swift, the use of the word Atlas is an ode to the Titan of perseverance. We also see that the responsibility rests on our shoulders to protect the character of the land in which the grapes grow. Atlas is also a reference to the different maps, or terroirs, where our vineyards grow.

SWIFT: Swifts (Swifts) are part of a family of high-flying birds called Apodidae, and are among the fastest birds in the world. Martin & Welma Smith's wine journey can be likened to that of a swift - while they may not always move us at the speed of light (making good wine requires patience), they are constantly on the move, exploring the many atlases of the Cape Winelands and its diverse terroirs.

In 2019, Martin & Welma Smith's dreams came true when the first vintage of Atlas Swift was born. All our wines are vinified in the same way, the only difference being the origin of the grapes, and are produced in very limited quantities due to the restrictions of their origin.