Winemaking & Terrior
CECILY 2025 was harvested over three small pickings between 18 and 26 February, each reflecting a unique point on the ripeness curve. Achieving balance in Viognier is always a challenge, but our cool climate allows for a longer ripening period that preserves the fruit's natural acidity while building those mouth-coating phenolics and striking concentration of flavours. Bunches were picked just after sunrise, cooled overnight, and whole-bunch pressed the following morning. Both sulphur and dry ice were omitted at processing to deliberately hyperoxidise the juice, a technique that precipitates the bitter phenols responsible for the more astringent expressions of this varietal. After two days of settling, the juice was racked to a combination of vessels for fermentation. We continue to favour neutral fermentation environments that preserve vineyard character: 54.5% of the blend was fermented and matured in French oak, 28.5% in stainless steel, and 17% in porcelain. Of the oak portion, 21.5% was new, with the balance in second and third fill. Once fermentation was complete, all components rested on their gross lees for seven months without bâtonnage, before being brought together-lees and all-for a final month's settling in stainless steel prior to bottling.
Tasting Notes
The nose opens with peach blossom and mandarin, evolving with time to reveal prickly pear and apricot pip. The palate shows the variety's hallmark texture, held in perfect balance by the vibrant acidity our site naturally provides. True to form, CECILY 2025 shows both the weight and precision of cool-climate Viognier, and remains, as ever, the most fitting partner to a classic Cape curry.
About Beau & OAD
In 2019, the Scotts and us founders of OAD went on a trip to South Africa and was absolutely blown away by the experience we had at Beau Constantia. A borderline 10 out of 10 dining experience at the vineyard just outside Cape Town. More importantly, they also had a retail outlet of their pretty sublime wine. Not only great tasting notes, but also unreal value, which has since been an undefeated champ in our wine fridge over the past years. As we needed to restock our supplies, we learned that the great people over at Beau had yet to have a distributor in Hong Kong, so we entered a partnership based on our shared affinity of great wines and good times.
