2024 Testalonga Baby Bandito Follow Your Dreams Carignan

This is the perfect antidote to the heavy, rustic image that often plagues Carignan. Craig and Carla Hawkins started this project to champion vineyards that yield wines of immediate pleasure - bottles you can open young that still deliver serious quality. Sourced from a bush vine block planted in 2001 on the Swartland’s dry soils, this is a wine that defies the heat of its region, offering a transparency and lightness that is rare for the variety.

This is Carignan stripped of its weight. If you are expecting a heavy red, look elsewhere. This is the "South African Trousseau" - a light, ethereal red that shares more DNA with a Jura rouge or a crunchy Cru Beaujolais. The fruit is naturally juicy and large-berried, which Craig preserves through careful canopy management to retain acidity.

For the 2024 vintage, the focus was on tension. By fermenting 100% whole-bunch in concrete tanks (and ageing in the same), Craig has tightened the structure, lowering the pH to give the wine more nerve while building a fine layer of tannin. It bursts with pomegranate, sour cherry and raspberry, dusted with white pepper and fynbos herbs. It is light-bodied and racy, a "thirst-quencher" in the best sense of the word, proving that serious winemaking doesn't always have to be heavy.