El Bandito The Dark Side

The Dark Side is Testalonga's Syrah, and the name winks at the grape's darker register rather than a Star Wars gag. Craig Hawkins picks early and keeps it light: fresh, low in alcohol, with fine powdery tannins, the antithesis of a big brooding Syrah. Whole bunches ferment in open tanks on wild yeasts, macerate eight to ten days, then age in old 500-litre French oak. Nothing added but a touch of sulphur near bottling; unfined, lightly filtered. The fruit is bush-vine Syrah planted in 2001 on Paardeberg granite. Barely 12.5%, and all the better for it.