Pear Eau de Vie

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Pear Eau De Vie

Beautiful amber-gold colour. The nose is a study in subtlety: pear (both ripe fruit and shy blossom), almond and apricot pip nuttiness with spice-tinged dried pear fruit character. That same gently spiced character is found on the warm, rich spirited palate. There’s an initial flare of warming cinnamon heat that then subsides to reveal vanilla, pear and crushed autumn leaves. Beautiful integration of wood makes the mouthful só harmonious.

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Winemaking

Packham pear juice was sourced from Cape Fruit Processors for the making of this Eau de Vie. The juice was delivered to the Terra del Capo Cellar in Franschhoek. Ten thousand litres of pear pulp was innoculated with yeast and fermented dry. The resulting pear wine is then taken to the distillery where it was distilled to a pear eau de vie using the only Armagnac still found in the Southern Hemisphere.To enhance the pear flavour, the Eau de Vie was matured in old 225 L french oak chardonnay barrels for 4 years. The Eau de Vie barrels were then blended and diluted to 45 % volume. It was then filtered and stabilised before being bottled by hand.

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Origin of Fruit

Cape Fruit Processors

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Varietal

Pear

The Journey

SPIRITS AT L’ORMARINS

The first vintage of L’Ormarins Sagnac was only distilled in 2007, but the journey started in 2005 for Anthonij Rupert Wyne when Johann Rupert initiated the search for an alembic still. Armagnac as a category however is much, much older and was established, by all accounts around 1387 when French Royalty started taking an interest in it.

Armagnac is a distinctive brandy, usually distilled from wine and made from a blend of grapes using a column still rather than a pot still as in the production of Cognac. Similarly Eau de Vie is distilled from various fruits and as the name suggests was seen as the elixir of life by some. At the end of the 17th Century it was merely seen as a preservative. The drinkers of pure Eau de Vie, were no doubt the Dutch sailors. They called it brandewijn.

At the end of the 19th Century improvements were made on the column still, now called the alembic still and a growth in the trade of Eau de Vie encouraged distillers to perfect their equipment. In 2006 an alembic still arrived on L’Ormarins and was installed. Producing 2.5 barrels of Sagnac per vintage between 2007 and 2011. By 2011 “Buks” Willem Venter (the artisanal distiller responsible for L’Ormarins Sagnac and Eau de Vie) was eager to expand the range, having been introduced to the owner of most of the litchi trees in the Malelane region. Laboratory fermentations and distillations were done and the team went commercial with the resultant products in 2013. Both the first vintage of the L’Ormarins Litchi Eau de Vie as well as the L’Ormarins Sagnac was released for the first time in July 2015.