As our friends in Texas oft say, “If you are telling the truth, you ain’t bragging!” So on that note, we want to brag, er, tell the truth about our recently released Silkbush wines. Below are the two recent accolades our Silkbush wines have received in South Africa. Further, I would like to expand on our recent Michelangelo awards a bit.

1. This 20-year-old Michelangelo International Wine Awards competition is the largest, most competitive in South Africa. This year, there were 1,829 entries. Silkbush entered just three wines: Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc, and our proprietary red blend, Altitude and gold medaled with two of them.
2. We don’t know how many Viognier entries there were but six other highly regarded wineries entered wines that won three Golds and three Silvers. These included the Saronsberg, Anura, and Lourensford cellars. But Silkbush beat them all with our Double Gold Viognier!
3. Our Sauvignon Blanc received a Gold Medal, one of 271 given out, representing under 15% of the total entries in the competition. Certainly all Gold winners were highly deserving, as virtually no wineries enter ordinary wines since the competition is known for being highly competitive, and 75% of the judges are wine experts from overseas. (No hometown favoritism!)
4. Altitude, our red blend, while a terrific wine, in my opinion is perhaps a young A- today, composed of five 2014 vintage red cultivars, and was competing against a great many excellent red wines of older vintages. Give it another year, and we expect it to be a sold A, Gold Medal qualifier, if not better.
5. Lastly, while we did not enter our excellent Pinotage, the Flagstone 2014 Writer’s Block Pinotage was one of 18 Platinum winners, requiring a score of at least 96. For the past 12 years, Flagstone Writer’s Block Pinotage has come from 100% Silkbush grapes, and almost always is chosen as one of the Absa Top Ten Pinotages. The other championship awards for this wine in other competitions are manifold, and a record of which honestly few other wineries can only dream.
6. Silkbush Pinotage is a superb wine, normally priced at retail at about 50% that of Writer’s Block. However, we will likely import the Pinotage only when we know we have retail demand for commercial quantities. Sadly, the US wine market for Pinotage is still in its early stages, no matter how high the quality.