Raka Wines

Raka to go full volume at Oyster Festival

29 May 2015

The popular Oyster, Wine and Food Festival has grown into one of the biggest autumn wine occasions in Gauteng.
Apart from fresh oysters in abundance the other big attraction is wine. A multitude of wine stalls will be selling wine directly to the public, mostly at cellar door prices. This is a great opportunity for wine lovers to stock up on red wine for the winter months ahead. 

 

Raka Wine will present four red wines at the festival. Apart from the very popular and well known Raka Spliced and Raka Quinary (a TOP SA 100 Wine) the Raka Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot will be available for tasting, the latter by public request, since it has not been on show in Gauteng for a few years.
As oysters will be freely available the Raka Sauvignon Blanc and Raka Rose, both crowd pleasers at wine festivals, will also be available.

 

Now in it's tenth year the festival has found a new home at Monte Casino and will run from15h00-20h00 on Friday 29 May. Saturday 30 May business hours will be 11h00-20h00 and on Sunday 31 May the festival starts again at 11h00 and runs until 17h00.

Judith Lee of Full Volume Events who presents the festival is expecting 12 000 - 15 000 visitors over the three days of the festival.Do not miss out on this great opportunity and be sure to visit the wine circle for a taste of excellent Raka wine. You may just become a dedicated fan.

Our farm, brand and family:

The Dreyer Family bought the farm, Remhoogte south east of Hermanus in the Akkedisberg area in 1982. Piet Dreyer was doing commercial fishing at the time. They ran livestock and later planted citrus trees. Piet’s wife and children tended the farm in his absence. During 1999 the Dreyers planted 10 hectares Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Shiraz. Since then a few hectares were added every year, and the 68 hectares on the farm at present, includes plantings of Pinotage, Sangiovese, Viognier, Mourvedre, Petit Verdot and also larger plantings of Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Sauvignon Blanc, making the farm self-sufficient as far as varieties needed for the different blends are concerned.

The farm is 17 kilometres from Stanford in a glen in the Kleinrivier Mountains, where the Klein River flows through. The Kleinrivier Mountains is the southernmost mountain range in Africa and its slopes provide a variety of aspects and soil types. The farm’s proximity to the sea ensures cooling breezes from Walker Bay in the afternoon while the South Easter blowing in from Agulhas on the Indian Ocean reduces the summer heat. The newly demarcated Klein River wine of origin ward is adjacent to the Walker Bay district and is cooler than the traditional wine growing areas of the Cape.

 

Our Name and Brands:
Piet Dreyer was a fisherman all his life. As a child, when he was about 16 years old, his father was seriously injured in a motorcycle crash and he helped his mother to support the family by catching fish over weekends and after school on a friend’s fishing boat. The sea and fishing remained his passion and he grew from ski-boat owner to freezer-vessel owner and the "kaalvoet (barefoot) skipper" on his vessel Raka became well known amongst the squid fisherman. Because of the squid squirting black ink all over the boat, Piet decided to have himself a black freezer vessel built, so that he need not repaint that often, and called it RAKA. (From the Afrikaans poem by N.P. van Wyk Louw, about an African tribe being threatened by Raka, half man half beast and as black as the night). He took this name as his brand when he ventured, with equal passion, into winemaking - hence the slogan: born of the sea, guided by the stars, blessed by the earth.

 

Family involvement
Piet and Elna Dreyer are blessed with three sons and a daughter. Gerhard, the eldest, went into squid fishing after school, and is now shouldering a lot of his father’s responsibilities, leaving Piet free to realise his ambition of becoming a quality wine producer. Josef, the second son, obtained his B Agric degree from Elsenburg at the end of 2006 and he is now Raka’s winemaker. In addition he is responsible for accounting. Younger son Pieter, destined to become Raka’s viticulturist, is a student at Elsenburg, but has to fit in delivery and marketing between classes, and help out in the tasting room during holidays. Jorika, the Dreyer’s only daughter, recently matriculated from Overberg High School and can now give her full attention to managing the tasting room, a job she’s been doing part- time for the past four years. The whole family pitch in during harvest when every hand counts.

The farm is situated in a narrow valley in the Kleinriver Mountains, southernmost mountain range in Africa. The vineyards are planted on either side of the Klein River that flows through the valley on its way to the Atlantic Ocean in Walkerbay. This means that there are both north and south facing slopes under vines and even some vineyards facing to the west. The altitude varies between about 58m above sea level for the vineyards planted next to the river to 120m for the vineyards lying on the higher slopes. The soil types are equally diverse. The highest slopes consist of decomposed sandstone and Cartref soils of sandstone origin are found.

On these soils Sauvignon Blanc and some Shiraz were planted. The reds are mostly planted on schale of the Glenrosa type; some deep and rich, while other areas contains rock, and elsewhere patches of Oakleaf occur. There are also some sandy soils along the riverbanks –these are good for Viognier and Sauvignon blanc. Vines and rootstock were chosen to suit the soil type. The prevailing winds are the southeaster blowing in from the Indian Ocean (Agulhas area) during summer and the rain-carrying north westerly in winter. The proximity to the sea ensures a cooling westerly sea breeze from Walker Bay in the afternoon. The farm is sheltered by the mountains from the south easterly rains which sometimes comes untimely to the Overberg during summer.

The cellar and winemaking
The private family owned cellar was completed in time for the 2002 harvest, and can accommodate 400 tonnes per harvest. It is gravity-fed, so that pumps are only used to get the wine from the fermenters to the barrels in the adjoining barrel cellar. There are sufficient small fermenters to separately accommodate the grapes from each vineyard block. The wine so separately vinified is also kept separate during the ageing process when the wine from fermenters (thus each block) is kept in a separate batch of 225 litre French and American oak barrels.
 

The harvest and winemaking process:
The grapes are handpicked in small lug boxes in which it is transported to the cellar. Hand picking allows for pre-sorting. Bunches not at optimum ripeness or spoiled in any other way are left in the vineyard. In the cellar the lug boxes are emptied onto a conveyor belt where all matter other than grape is removed before destemming. After desteming the berries are further sorted (green berries and stems removed) before being crushed directly into the tanks. The grapes from each block are vinified separately in small stainless steel fermenters. Cold soaking takes place for up to three days before fermentation starts. The cake is punched down manually every four hours during fermentation. Some wines are left on the skins for further contact after fermentation. All red wines are matured in small French or American oak barrels.