Klein Constantia

Vin de Constance, 2016

Name: Vin de Constance
Brand: Klein Constantia
Price: 368.88 GBP

97/100

Vinous

Available Vintages

all 2010 2016 2019 2020

delivery

in bond

Broking

2016
6x50cl
DP
£368.88

Justerini & Brooks Tasting note

One of the most prestigious and widely admired sweet wines in the world, we recommend it unreservedly. There are very few wines of this quality, complexity and excitement, anywhere in the world, offered at such a fair price. In the case of the 2016, this is a brilliant sweet wine that can be enjoyed immediately or cellared for 20+ years, all for less than £240 per case. Klein Constantia is an exceptionally beautiful estate with uniquely cool, high elevation vineyards posited in the foothills of Table Mountain. Facing the Atlantic, and braced by continuous ocean winds, Constantia is one of the true cool climate regions in South Africa. Vin de Constance is produced from the Muscat de Frontignon grape, harvested by hand in numerous passes at different levels of ripeness, balancing all those beautiful sugars and acidities with no botrytis influence whatsoever. For this reason, the wine retains a beautifully crisp, floral and lightly honeyed profile with crystalline fruit and oodles of energy. Now fully under the guidance of Matt Day, the wines are more precise than they have ever been, as he favours picking on the earlier side to retain freshness, with far greater attention to detail and huge investment in the cellar. Vintages 2014, 2015 and now 2016 are evidence of the steady incremental improvements that Matt and team have put in place across the whole estate, and each year we see the wines rise to a new level. To those who have not yet tasted these young wines, they have less of the heavy profile of yesteryear, instead they are purer and racier, but with an emphasis on the naturally exuberant, perfumed fruit that has kept Vin de Constance at the top of the sweet wine pyramid for over 300 years.

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GUARANTEED PROVENANCE

Provenance in fine wine

When it comes to purchasing wine, provenance is of utmost importance. A wine’s history – where it’s sourced from and how it’s been stored – can have an enormous influence on the eventual enjoyment it provides. At Justerini & Brooks, we can trace nearly every case back to the domaine, estate or Château it originally came from; we ship from over 200 wine producers throughout the world.

Wines not bought directly from the vineyard are either sourced from trusted suppliers, with whom we share the same philosophy and rigour in buying, or from our own network of Cellarers customers. These customers’ wines are stored in optimal conditions in Octavian Corsham and, in the vast majority of cases, have been stored by us since the wine was first shipped. We do not purchase wine from auctions.

We feel it is equally important to for our customers that the case they buy and leave in storage with us is exactly the same case they subsequently have delivered. This may sound obvious and straightforward, yet we are one of very few merchants to have taken measures to ensure this.

We have created a system where every case is independent, thereby ensuring a trail of ownership and peace of mind for every customer.

The Journey

Justerinis ensures that every case of wine stored with Cellarers (Wines) Ltd has a unique identifier and customer’s name, almost unheard of in the industry as it is expensive to administer. These details are printed and placed on every case which is logged and recorded under your account name and kept in the world’s most renowned storage facility, Octavian Corsham.

This information is sent from our systems to the warehouse every day to ensure the trail of ownership is verified and upheld.

While customer reserves are stored in Corsham, our physical stocks are kept in Hoddesdon, further providing a geographical separation between customers’ wines with Cellarers and Justerinis’ own stock.

Further Reassurance

Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is a legally separate limited company from Justerini & Brooks which currently holds approximately £450 million worth of customer reserves. It is fully insured to catastrophic loss. Many merchants will state that wine in their care is fully insured, but in reality this is on an individual case basis with insufficient cover for total loss as this is prohibitively expensive. The cover provided by Octavian and Justerini & Brooks is unmatched.

Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is audited by PwC every year.

Critic Reviews

97/100

Neal Martin,

Vinous

The 2016 Vin de Constance contains 165g/L of residual sugar. This has a wonderful bouquet with layers of wild honey and acacia, little-changed since I last encountered it a couple of years back. The palate is concentrated, multi-faceted yet primal at the moment. I suspect this vintage is maturing at a glacial pace, but I cannot wait to taste this at 12-15 years of age. Outstanding.

drinking window 2028 - 2055

date of review 07/2022

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Specifications

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abv:

14%

allergen information

This product may contain sulphites. Full allergen information is available upon request, please call our Customer Relations Team on +44 (0)20 7484 6430.