Taaibosch

Crescendo, Stellenbosch, 2019

Name: Crescendo, Stellenbosch
Brand: Taaibosch
Price: 184.73 GBP

94/100

Vinous

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2019
75cl
DP
£30.79
2019
6x75cl
DP
£184.73

Justerini & Brooks Tasting note

The fantastic 2019 shows that there was no beginner’s luck with the 2018. A contrasting, cooler, later vintage, the Crescendo 2019 has a cool, lifted, stony red and black fruited bouquet with a fine salinity, trembling freshness and distinguished tannic structure which will require a few years longer in bottle to show at its best. Fermentation takes place in stainless steel and cement, followed by a long gentle cuvaison of up to 60 days, before it is racked in to cement for malolactic fermentation. The wines are blended and moved to French barrique, a third new, where they age for 14 months. After that it is re-assembled entirely and split 70% in to foudré and 30% in to cement for another year in order to “refine the mouthfeel and heighten the sense of perfume. We get all the benefit of foudré aging without adding any extra wood tannin or taste.” It is then held back in bottle for a year prior to release. There are no shortcuts here and everything is done with an eye for quality. In our view, Crescendo is South Africa’s best Bordeaux-blend at the moment and certainly a wine worth following.

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GUARANTEED PROVENANCE

Provenance in fine wine

When it comes to purchasing wine, provenance is of upmost 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

94/100

Neal Martin,

Vinous

The 2020 Crescendo is the third release from Taaibosch, a blend of 65% Cabernet Franc, 26% Cabernet Sauvignon and 9% Merlot. It is matured 13 months in 225-liter barriques (30% new) and then a further 12 months, 75% in foudres and 25% in cement. This beautifully defined bouquet offers perfumed black fruit laced with truffle and cedar, a touch of wild mint surfacing with time. The medium-bodied palate has more pliant tannins than the first two vintages, perhaps with a little more flesh and less austerity towards the finish that delivers slightly savory black fruit layers. Certainly, this represents one of the Cape's finest expressions of Cabernet Franc. Highly recommended.

drinking window 2025 - 2045

date of review 11/2023

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13.5%

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.