By Lafras Huguenet

There is, I think, a tendency among wine commentators — and perhaps especially among South Africans — to become over-excited whenever one of the Cape’s wines edges towards international distinction. One hears, with exhausting regularity, that this or that bottling is “world-class”, usually after a flattering score from London or New York. Most of the time, the claim is premature. Sometimes it is faintly embarrassing.

The Leeu Passant Chardonnay is another matter entirely.

After a decade of vintages, and after the recent vertical tasting held in Franschhoek, it has become difficult to avoid the conclusion that this wine now belongs among the world’s most compelling expressions of Chardonnay. Not because it resembles Burgundy, nor because it flatters fashionable contemporary taste, but because it possesses that increasingly rare quality in fine wine: inevitability. It tastes exactly of where it comes from and of nothing else.

This is rarer than technical brilliance. Cellars across the world are full of technically brilliant Chardonnay. Stainless steel can preserve freshness; barrels can confer texture; cultured yeasts and reductive handling can manufacture intrigue. None of that, however, guarantees identity. Indeed, modern Chardonnay has often become a kind of international dialect spoken with varying accents but using exactly the same vocabulary.

The Leeu Passant wine refuses this trap.

What struck me most about the reports from the vertical tasting was not merely the quality of the wines, but their composure. These are not Chardonnays straining for attention. They are not laden with oak sweetness, nor reduced into flinty caricature. They are calm wines. They trust the vineyard. In an age of vinous theatricality, that restraint feels almost radical.

And the vineyard itself deserves attention. A Stellenbosch Helderberg facing the cool influence of False Bay, it has now crossed that invisible threshold at which vines cease merely producing fruit and begin transmitting place. Young vines often shout variety. Older vines murmur geology.

That, increasingly, is what one seems to encounter in Leeu Passant Chardonnay: geology rendered drinkable.

The 2015 maiden vintage now appears almost prophetic. First vintages are usually earnest things, admirable perhaps, but slightly anxious, as though the wine itself senses the burden of expectation. Yet the inaugural Leeu Passant already carried remarkable assurance. The citrus tension, the saline edge, the refusal of easy generosity, all the essential signatures were already there. One suspects the wine must now be entering that deeply satisfying phase of maturity where primary fruit begins yielding to wax, hazelnut and marine savouriness without losing freshness.

And freshness, here, is crucial. South African Chardonnay has too often struggled with the burden of sunlight. Ripeness comes easily in the Cape; finesse less so. Many producers have therefore oscillated absurdly between excess and denial, first embracing Californian opulence, then pursuing reductive severity with almost religious zeal. The result has frequently been wines more concerned with fashion than truth.

Leeu Passant has wisely ignored fashion.

The 2017 vintage, to my mind, sounds close to profound. Christian Eedes called it his favourite release at the time, and one can see why. The descriptors — grapefruit, blossom, salt, crystalline acidity — suggest a wine in complete equilibrium. Great Chardonnay is never simply rich, nor simply taut. It must possess both breadth and line, both sunlight and shadow. Too much fruit and the wine becomes obvious; too much acidity and it becomes merely intellectual. The 2017 seems to occupy that elusive middle territory where flavour and structure become indivisible.

More importantly, though, it appears to possess energy. This matters enormously. One can drink many technically accomplished Chardonnays and remain unmoved. Energy is different. Energy is what compels another sip. It is what makes wine feel alive rather than assembled.

Then comes 2021, a vintage which increasingly looks set to become one of the Cape’s modern classics. Here, apparently, the wine broadened without softening. The fruit spectrum deepened into yellow citrus and white peach, yet the acidity retained absolute authority. One hears repeatedly of low pH levels in these wines, and thankfully so. Acidity is not merely refreshment; it is architecture. Without it, Chardonnay collapses under its own weight.

What is so impressive about these wines is that they achieve concentration without resorting to sweetness, extraction or oak inflation. There is no attempt to seduce. They ask the drinker to pay attention. That confidence marks the difference between luxury wine and fine wine. Luxury seeks approval. Fine wine simply articulates place.

And this, ultimately, is why Leeu Passant matters so profoundly to South Africa.

For decades, South African wine has existed in a slightly awkward psychological condition. The country possesses extraordinary vineyards, yet has often looked abroad for validation. Burgundy remained the implicit benchmark; Bordeaux the silent authority. The language surrounding Cape wine therefore became permanently aspirational: “emerging”, “promising”, “up-and-coming”.

Frankly, it grew tiresome.

The Leeu Passant Chardonnay renders such vocabulary obsolete. This is not an “emerging” wine. It is not promising. It has arrived.

Moreover, it has arrived without surrendering its South African identity. Too many ambitious New World Chardonnays attempt to erase sunshine, as though ripeness itself were shameful. But the Cape is luminous. It should taste luminous. The genius of Leeu Passant is that it preserves this sunlight while disciplining it with maritime freshness and mineral structure. The result is neither Burgundy nor California nor Australia. It is Helderberg.

That achievement is cultural as much as viticultural.

The broader Leeu Passant project — recovering old vineyards, reviving neglected Cape varieties, treating South African wine history as inheritance rather than inconvenience — may prove one of the most important intellectual contributions to modern Cape wine. The brand has helped reposition South African fine wine not as imitation, but as interpretation of its own landscape and memory.

And memory matters. Great wine cultures are built not merely on quality, but on continuity. A vertical tasting of ten vintages is therefore significant beyond the bottles themselves. It establishes chronology. It creates historical confidence. It allows drinkers to understand that South African Chardonnay is capable not merely of youthful brilliance, but of evolution and endurance.

That, in the end, may be the most convincing argument of all.

Fine wine is time made visible. The Leeu Passant Chardonnay appears increasingly capable of carrying time with grace. Few wines anywhere in the world can truly do that. Fewer still can do so while speaking in such a distinct and unmistakable voice.

South Africa should stop calling these wines “world-class”.

The phrase is too small for what they have become.

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One of the aspects of the old South African wine industry, harking back to when it was still run by the KWV, is the aversion shown to media queries deemed troublesome. Journalists daring to ask questions about South African wine matters and legislation considered probing and veering away from the industry’s official “need-to-know basis” were usually brushed off, avoided and deemed prickly shit-stirrers.

Ask any hack seeking answers surrounding the KWV’s illicit trading in fake Champagne in the early 1990s, or the extent of farm-worker riots in the winelands at the same time, and they will concur: you reached a firmly closed door.

After the KWV was privatised in 1997, the attitudes of industry bodies towards journalists hardly improved. During Su Birch’s reign of terror as head of Wines of South Africa (Wosa), I penned a piece questioning Wosa’s lacklustre and ineffective methods of promoting Cape wines internationally. Galled to the hilt, Vinpro – the producers’ arm that had evolved from the KWV – called me in to explain myself. I was eloquently crapped on from a dizzy height for not supporting valiant industry marketing efforts and for simply not understanding the hard times grape growers and winemakers were facing.

Journalists have thick skins, and reactions of the passive-aggressive kind largely blow over. Currently, relations between industry bodies – such as SA Wine and Wines of South Africa – and the media are largely non-existent, the only communication from the industry side being the odd press release underscoring continued resilience and regenerative farming traits of which we, as interested parties in Cape wine, should be proud. So be it.

However, once a viable query arises and a penner of vinous words seeks an answer, the industry does the old trick of jumping back down into the bolt-hole.

At issue is a recent piece of South African wine legislation concerning the letter “s”. One letter. And it is not “sharp”, “Shiraz” or – least of all – “sensible”.

A few producers alerted me to the oracles of wine officialdom who had initiated a move to change the words “Old Vine” that said winemakers have implemented on their labels. One must remember that Old Vine wines are, by the very industry officialdom itself, deemed a shining light of the local wine industry, one it actively encourages producers to promote. And quite rightly so.

Well, the folk at the Wine Certification Authority are concerned about the use of “Old Vine” on a wine label, as consumers could allegedly be misled into thinking that the contents of the bottle are made from one single vine. To avoid the continuation of this immense deviance, an old-vine producer must therefore amend “Old Vine” on the marque to “Old Vines”. Because consumers apparently have a rightful need to know that the wine in question is made from an old vineyard constituting a number of vine plants. And only if the juice originates from one single vine plant may one drop the “s” and state that this is an “Old Vine” wine. Interesting to see, then, if the Old Vine Project which manages this part of the industry will be requested to become the Old Vines Project.

I am not going to opine on the merits and logic of this bit of nonsense, but for the sake of thorough clarity and objective reporting for an article I am writing for Die Burger newspaper, I contacted the officials at SA Wine. Wanda Augustyn, professional and courteous as ever, acknowledged this vine-to-vines amendment and helpfully gave me the relevant contact details for the Wine Certification Authority.

A simple missive requesting confirmation, reason and clarity for the sake of communicating wine-industry legislation in a daily newspaper has, to date, been ignored. Another friendly official from SA Wine assured me that the Wine Certification Authority had been prompted to react to the media query, and it is interesting to note that said official and their body have been ignored too.

Back to this piece of legislation concerning “Old Vine” and “Old Vines”: does the certification body not have anything better to do, or is it trying to justify its existence by concocting ridiculous red-tape snippets such as this?

An example of a surely more urgent matter, and one to which the Wine Certification Authority was alerted last year, is the selling and marketing of a “wine” made from oranges under the label “Orange Wine”. Fermented oranges, sold as South African wine. No action has been taken on this by the relevant authorities, who are probably too busy analysing petty wine nomenclature rather than acting where action is actually needed.

Save one’s gunpowder for the big game, and stop wasting it on the dassies. Or, as you wish, the dassie.

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Fresh from a bout of research into a few key role-players in the history of South African wine, I replaced my history and academic readings with the inner calm of catching up on the devastation of the war in Ukraine. This colourful, action-packed interlude veered into some roundabout investigation into Ukrainian wine, and an unexpected finding as to the origin of a wine grape cultivar that had always been assumed to be South African.

The variety in question is Roobernet, the most famous South African red grape crossing after Pinotage, and listed all over the local place as one of the country’s “indigenous varieties”. Roobernet is a viticultural liaison between the grapes Cabernet Sauvignon and Alicante Bouschet that was first done by CJ Orffer, Professor of Viticulture at Stellenbosch University from 1963 to 1986.

A brilliant academic consumed by his subject, between 1958 and 1964 Prof. Orffer carried out numerous wine grape crossings, and cultivar status was granted to six of these, namely Chenel, Weldra, Roobernet, Therona, Grachen and Nouvelle. He also made numerous rootstock crossings, of which the best known are US 2-1 and US 8-7.

Orffer’s legacy was fresh in my mind when reading about the wines of Ukraine, thus I had to look twice when coming across the origins of the Ukrainian grape going by the rather captivating name Odesa Black. Because there it stood: Odesa Black evolved as a crossing between, yes, Cabernet Sauvignon and Alicante Bouschet, done in 1948 at the Tairov Institute in Odesa, thus preceding Orffer’s Roobernet by some distance of time. And yet, most South African resources – official industry and other – claim the Cabernet Sauvignon/Alicante Bouschet wild child was the result of Orffer’s (indisputable) ingenuity.

Upon contacting some of the more communication-savvy folk at industry body South Africa Wine, they too were surprised, yet exceedingly co-operative, and I was sent a paper written by Orffer himself admitting that, when considering Roobernet, the initial idea was not to have Cabernet Sauvignon and Alicante Bouschet as the parents. The former, yes, but the other side was meant to be the Pontac variety.

Shortly before his death, Orffer requested Vititec – the Cape wine industry’s nursery for clones, cultivars and all things vine-related – to verify the parents of some of his crossings, as he suspected that some of the parentages had been recorded incorrectly.

Since the time of Orffer’s varietal crossings and his writing, DNA analyses of grape varieties had become de rigueur, and the great man had been alerted to all not being well with the assumed origins of his inter-cultivar activities. (Modesty in the academics of science tends to be more prevalent than in the arts, culture and literature departments, for sure.)

The parents of Roobernet were initially indicated as Cabernet Sauvignon and Pontac, the two grapes the Professor assumed he had crossed. However, for Orffer there were, in later years, indications that Pontac might not be one of the parents, with Alicante Bouschet being furthest from his mind. In fact, “due to the lower wine quality of Alicante Bouschet, it was never even considered for use as a crossing parent,” Orffer wrote in his paper to Vititec.

Morphologically, the leaves of Roobernet show very little resemblance to Alicante Bouschet and are often confused with Cabernet Sauvignon. However, Roobernet’s large bunches and high production indicated to Orffer a possible intervention by Alicante Bouschet in the Roobernet family tree. The leading authority at that time on DNA analysis in the world of viticulture was ENTAV (Établissement National Technique pour l’Amélioration de la Viticulture) in France.

This body took a look at Roobernet and, using their science – as said, not available at the time Orffer did his crossing – vindicated Orffer’s suspicion: Pontac played no role in Roobernet, and the Cabernet Sauvignon tune had all the time been backed up by Alicante Bouschet.

This was confirmed in 2007, a year before Orffer’s death, and in his letter to Vititec he stated that “pollen from Alicante Bouschet must therefore have entered inadvertently”.

Which, at the end of the day, makes Roobernet and Ukraine’s Odesa Black the same cultivar, the difference being that it was not a Stellenbosch, South Africa “discovery”, as Odesa Black had emerged far earlier.

The advent of DNA analysis also rewrote the origins of other grape varieties. Take the case of another esteemed viticulturist, Dr Hermann Müller of Thurgau in Switzerland, whose Riesling and Sylvaner crossing, named Müller-Thurgau, at one stage surpassed Riesling plantings in Germany. Some researchers later questioned this, as many characteristics corresponded almost exclusively with Riesling and not with Sylvaner. Under scrutiny of DNA analysis, Dr Müller’s famed variety was shown to be, in fact, a marrying of Riesling and the Madeleine Royale grape, with Sylvaner nowhere in sight.

Proving to us of a limited academic nature that even at the top echelons, science is not exact.

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By Lafras Huguenet

There are wines that impress, and there are wines that endure. Then, on very rare occasions, there are wines that seem to step outside of time altogether: wines that do not merely survive the decades, but absorb them, refine them, and emerge with a kind of quiet, unarguable authority. Emile Joubert wrote about one, namely Vriesenhof’s 2003 Pinot Noir. Great wine, but still a pup.

How about the 1986 CWG Grand Reserve from Delheim, crafted by Guild member Kevin Arnold under the watchful eye of Delheim pater familia Spatz Sperling, a far more senior number showing that marked authority.

To encounter it now is to engage not only with a wine, but with a philosophy, one rooted in patience, restraint, and a deeply European sensibility of what fine wine might aspire to be. In the context of contemporary Stellenbosch, where ripeness and polish often take centre stage, this wine speaks in a quieter, more measured voice. Yet it is precisely this discretion that commands attention.

The colour of this Grand Reserve 1986, at first glance, tells its own story: a limpid garnet core fading gently to brick at the rim, suggestive not of decline but of evolution. There is no murk here, no sense of fatigue. Only a poised transparency, as though the wine has shed all excess and now stands revealed in its essential form.

Aromatically, it unfolds with the slow grace of something that knows it has nothing to prove. There is cedar, certainly, and the faintest trace of cigar box, those familiar signposts that might indeed recall the great growths of Pauillac. But alongside these come notes of dried rose petal, of old leather-bound books, of forest floor after autumn rain. The fruit, though no longer primary, persists in a haunting register: redcurrant, perhaps, or a whisper of plum, now softened and interwoven with the tertiary complexities of age.

On the palate, the wine achieves that most elusive of states: harmony without inertia. The tannins, once undoubtedly firm, have resolved into something silken and almost architectural: present, shaping, but never obtrusive. Acidity, too, plays its role with quiet assurance, lending lift and continuity without ever asserting itself. There is a seamlessness here, a sense that every element has found its rightful place within the whole.

One is struck, above all, by the wine’s sense of proportion. There is no excess, no flamboyance. Only balance, clarity, and a kind of inner luminosity. It is, in this respect, profoundly “old school,” though that phrase scarcely does justice to what is achieved here. If anything, it reminds us that the so-called old school was never about austerity for its own sake, but about fidelity. To site, to structure, to time.

And time, indeed, is the silent collaborator in this wine’s achievement. Four decades have not diminished this great Stellenbosch Bordeaux blend; rather, they have distilled it. What remains is not power, nor even complexity in the conventional sense, but something rarer: a feeling of completeness. The wine does not evolve in the glass so much as it reveals itself, layer by measured layer, each nuance contributing to an overarching sense of calm coherence.

There is, inevitably, a poignancy to this experience. Spatz Sperling was a figure of immense character, a custodian of tradition in a landscape that would, in time, change dramatically. To taste this wine is to glimpse his vision and Arnold’s craftmanship – not as an abstraction, but as something tangible, enduring, and quietly eloquent.

What, then, does one say of such a wine? It is not “impressive” in the modern sense, nor does it seek to dazzle. Instead, it invites reflection. It asks us to consider what we value in wine: immediacy or longevity, impact or integrity. In its composed, unhurried way, the 1986 Grand Reserve offers an answer.

Magnificent, absolutely. But more than that, it is instructive. It reminds us that greatness in wine is not a matter of scale, but of balance; not of novelty, but of truth. And in doing so, it stands as a quiet testament to what Stellenbosch has achieved, and will continue to do so. Thanks to the foundations laid by Delheim and others.

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1. A gin martini can never be too cold or too dry.

2.  Don’t buy wine to resell it. Buy out of love, and that love will grow to the extent that you’ll never want to let it go. And neither should you.

3. Read everything on wine written by Andrew Jefford and Terry Theise. They give worth, credence and respect to your obsession. And make you feel all the wiser and the better for harbouring it.

4. Never kiss a girl with the smell of brandy-and-Coke on her breath unless you want your morals tested and a beating-up from her girlfriend.

5. Pay no heed to the prescriptiveness of food-and-wine pairings. They are only there to stifle imagination and to keep one from the path of adventure and discovery.

6. Never trust any wine advice from a vegan or vegetarian, for they cannot know what true taste is.

7. A whisky requiring more than two ice-cubes in a double-tot pour can lead to blindness.

8. Never lap Vintage Port from the belly-button of a Portuguese virgin without asking her permission first.

9. A fine Havana cigar makes any alcohol beverage taste and smell better.

10. Never argue with a French sommelier until you have whacked him to the floor first. A true gentleman disagrees from the moral high-ground only.

11. Do not confront a host who has served you box-wine from a decanter. But do pee on his toilet seat on your way out.

12. There can never be enough Champagne, ever.

What are your rules? Comments welcome.

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Every time I hear a wine critic state that South African Pinot Noir does not rival the quality of the wines made from this variety in Burgundy, I want to ask said person: How stupid do you think we really are? My journalism professor warned our class about the alienating boredom of the Well Known Fact, which aforementioned assertation on Cape Pinot Noir as compared to Burgundy is.

And for further news, which I will state on behalf of these monotonous sages of matter vinous: Yes, South Africa will never make Pinot Noir like Burgundy. Neither will Napa, nor New Zealand, Germany or the vineyards surrounding the Tamil hide-outs in Sri Lanka.

Why the temerity to state this? Well, no New Zealand sheep-farmer will ever offer a leg of lamb comparable in flavour to one from South Africa’s Karoo. And no date-palm growing on the banks of the Orange River in the Northern Cape will present a date to the intoxicating degree of treacle-sweetness as one from Morocco.

But is the leg of Kiwi lamb or the unctuous Northern Cape date inferior to that originating from the geography of the other? Only in the eyes of the beholder, who wants to see them as such.

The Cape will not ever create Pinot Noir like Burgundy, but it can offer great Pinot Noir in its own right, one worthy of respect in the most rarified circles of Burgundian be-fuckedness. I know, for I have had a few. Most recently the Vriesenhof Pinot Noir 2003 made for the Cape Winemakers Guild by Jan Boland Coetzee.

It was Jan’s favourite Cape Pinot Noir vintage, and he was not shy to call it as good as Grand Cru Burgundy, but one that speaks with a South African accent, implying that the two regions will never interpret the variety in a manner of duplication. This was ten years ago, when Jan and I sipped this wine over a breakfast of saffron-yellow farm-eggs and impala sausage. Now, in 2026, this Vriesenhof Pinot Noir is spectacular in every sense. Forget about the variety, it is just a magnificent wine, to my mind the GS of Pinot Noir. Although far scarcer, but no less icon-worthy.

The wine was decanted, a deep shade of ruby with a slightly lighter, crimson edge on the glass. It smelt like wine, the dramatic, brooding soul of the fermented grape, randy and growling and almost confrontational. No rose petals. No truffle. No poncy fruit-charm. This wine has such big balls it wouldn’t last 15 minutes at a Sea Point trance party without getting groped.

It had been in new wood, see. When it comes to wood, Jan Boland did not stuff around. Cement eggs, clay amphorae: toys and showpieces. Wood. French. Tight. Hard and new.

The wine was fermented in new wood, punched down. Then malolactic fermentation, then aged for 10 months. The full monty.

Thus, 23 years later, it is as dark as the heart of a Hamas sniper and as robustly pure and healthy as a German gymnast training for Oktoberfest. There are cultured power and domineering personality, in texture and flavour.

Tannins are still coiled like whore-house bed-springs with a decade of bonking still in them. The tannins bear flavour. It is iodine and liquorice. Black-pudding made from the blood of Iberian pigs and cured in a hollow cave for months. The savouriness meets surly runs of cherries the size of Kate Winslet’s nipples, only tighter and less liquid.

This Pinot Noir takes the text-book, rips it up and sets it alight with the breath of underfed, furious dragons. No willowy grace, easy-fruit or overdone tertiary forest floor or knobbly wet truffles. Just an attack, a grip and an overpowering run of brilliant wine.

Power in its glory. One of a kind, never to be replicated

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For a lover of wine, there are few pleasures greater than witnessing the astonishment, delight and gratitude that spread across a fellow enthusiast’s face when one surprises them with an exceptional bottle. Not merely something pleasant, agreeable or well made. I speak of the celestial. The spellbinding. The improbable. Something that makes the recipient understand that your gift, and the joy it offers, is a once-in-a-lifetime encounter, an experience granted to very few among the living.

And so it was with the bottle of Madeira I finally managed to place into my hands and to offer to my dear friend, De Witt.

When it comes to wine, the image of Madeira has long suffered from memories of the cheap, sweetened concoctions that, decades ago, were produced and sold under that name in places such as South Africa and Australia. That ill-mannered appropriation of the name has largely faded, and today most wines bearing the Madeira label originate from the Portuguese island of Madeira itself, where this singular wine has been crafted for centuries. In our time, Madeira ranks among the rarest and most costly wines on earth.

There are three reasons for this. First, the tiny island of Madeira supports only some 200 hectares of vineyard, a minute primary resource. Then there is the feature that makes Madeira so uniquely itself: it can, in essence, age forever in bottle. The explanation lies in the wine’s extraordinary treatment after fortification. In large casks, high in the lodges, the maturing wine is exposed to heat for years — warmed by the sun — which concentrates flavour and induces a benign oxidation, protecting the wine from the slow, ruinous oxygen that otherwise seeps through cork over time.

The third reason for Madeira’s desirability is simply this: a fine Madeira is among the most wondrous and magical wines on earth. Nothing truly compares. Whether at the dry end fashioned from Sercial grapes, or at the richly sweet extreme of Malmsey, an aged Madeira offers an aromatic and flavour experience of rare profundity. (Incidentally, Malmsey Madeira is made from the Malvasia grape, from which our beloved Malva pudding takes its name.)

But to return to De Witt and the Madeira. Through the intricate channels of a Portuguese friend’s brother’s cousin’s grandmother’s brother-in-law, I tracked down a bottle of Madeira made in 1899 — one hundred and twenty-seven years ago. That precise vintage mattered greatly, for De Witt harbours a deep passion for all matters relating to the Anglo-Boer War, and, as even I know, the first shots of that conflict were fired in 1899, the very year the grapes for this Madeira were pressed on the island.

I had to get a bottle of wine from that year, to taste it with De Witt, to witness his joy at consuming a wine made in the very same year of at which his – can one say beloved? – Boer War began.

The bottle was finally imported late last year from the island via a winemaking acquaintance who owed me a favour. At first, I intended to present it to De Witt as a Christmas gift, but since he was away on his annual ski holiday in Italy at the time, I was forced to wait.

And so April arrived, and I arranged to meet him “for a drink”, which duly took place the other day. To ensure the 1899 treasure remained in respectable condition, I took the bottle to a Portuguese cork importer. Manuel carefully drew the ancient cork and poured a teaspoon of the wine into a glass. We nosed it, then touched it cautiously to the tongue. Phenomenal. Heavenly. Already I could picture De Witt’s expression, that stunned, reverent appreciation reserved for rare jewels of the vine.

Manuel replaced the crumbling century-old cork with a fresh one, and two days later I arrived early in the afternoon at De Witt’s residence in Durbanville. The housekeeper, Bernice, has known me for years and understands that I never arrive there empty-handed. Mr De Witt was working in his office next to the house, but, Bernice said, I could wait in the sitting room, she would make tea.

No, that was quite all right, I replied, and walked to De Witt’s imposing yellowwood drinks cabinet. I found a glass decanter among the cognac and whisky bottles, drew the cork from my 1899 Madeira and poured the wine into the vessel. I wanted De Witt to taste the wine without knowing what it was and, once he had delivered his verdict, to astonish him with the empty antique bottle bearing the words “Madeira Terrantez 1899”. For the moment of revelation, I hid the empty bottle behind the cabinet.

The aroma of the Madeira flowed from the decanter and drifted through the entire sitting room. The wine gleamed with the colour of gold burnished in the fire of pleasure. I set the decanter carefully down on the cabinet, and just then my mobile phone rang. De Witt asked me to come to his office, as Bernice had made tea and we could chat briefly before he finished his work.

In his spacious office, filled with books — most of them on the Boer War — and memorabilia such as old French newspapers bearing the faces of Boer generals on their front pages, we spoke briefly about the recent grape harvest. He also told me, with evident delight, that his dear wife, Karetha, had finally begun taking an interest in wine. She and her book-club friends were, at that very moment, tasting wines at the Diemersdal estate just around the corner.

De Witt tapped at his keyboard, and the sound of the printer announced the fall of fresh sheets of paper. He rose, collected the pages and asked me to read the report he had written on the international citrus market, in which his business operates.

It was a good report, as always, and I suggested a few minor adjustments of grammar, but nothing serious. In my mind, however, I was already imagining how De Witt would react to the Madeira: 1899 — a wine neither of us would likely encounter again in our lifetimes.

At last he snapped his laptop shut. “Right, now I rather fancy a nip,” he said, rising to his feet. As we walked through the kitchen, I heard women’s voices somewhere beyond, followed by a burst of laughter: Karetha and her entourage had evidently returned from their wine tasting, and it sounded as though the session had been a success.

I told De Witt that I had brought something along for us to taste, and he replied that he simply could not wait.

We stepped into the sitting room, only to find it filled with women in colourful attire, chatting and laughing, perhaps twelve or thirteen of them.

“Hello, you two boys!” said Karetha, raising the glass from which she was drinking in our direction. “Whoever opened that sweet wine, good going old chap! After tasting Sauvignon Blanc all day, a little something sweet really does the trick.”

And then I saw that the ladies reclining comfortably on the long sofas and generous armchairs held glasses that were nearly empty. Nearly as empty as the decanter in which De Witt’s 1899 Madeira had so recently rested.

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He leans with his back on the car’s bonnet, and begins to take off his shoes. “I need to feel the soil,” he said, “and I need to know if the roots are happy.”

Brenwyn Arends and I are next to a vineyard near the False Bay coast outside Stellenbosch, and of the three of us, the vineyard is the oldest. But in a few months from now – God willing – only myself and Brenwyn will still be here, as this old Chenin Blanc vineyard is to be removed during winter, once the drenching Cape rains have arrived and loosened up the soil between these old dryland vines.

He puts his scuffed brown shoes and thin black socks on the floor of the passenger-seat and closes the door. And begins to walk, barefooit, into a row of short bush-vines. He turns around and smiles at me, the mouth short a few teeth, but the smile warm and wide and loving. “It feels nice to be back home.”

The vineyard was, he had told me earlier, home to Brenwyn for over 45 years. He had always lived with 11 other families as a farm-worker on the farm, before being moved to a house in Macassar ten years ago, a month short of his 60^th birthday.

I walk over to where Brenwyn is crouching at a low bush-vine, stroking the leaves, then tapping on the thick, knotted grey-black scion with his bony, wrinkled brown fingers.

“See the leaves,” he says, looking up at me and squinting at the sun above us. “They going rust-coloured early, not because of the virus or stuff like that, but because the vines must have carried heavy grapes this season.” He looks down at the bush-vine running his hands along the shoots, stopping at the points where the bunches had been picked this year, picked for the very last time.

“I haven’t been in this vineyard for six, seven years, but I can tell it was a big harvest this year and the vines carried heavy grapes, worked hard, perhaps six, eight tons a hectare,” he says. “It’s the leaves, see, the green sucked out by the work of ripening so much fruit, and I can feel, in me, the vines are tired, spent.” He stands up and I hear the joints cracking in his knees.

“So, the last harvest was a big one,” says Brenwyn and turns to look further down the row. “Probably a good way for a vineyard to go out, with a big last harvest.”

I walk next to him along the row of Chenin Blanc vines lined in the direction of the Helderberg. The first signs of autumn have pulled the sharpness from the sun, giving the sky a softer hue. The din of traffic in the distance can be heard. My boots crunch on the gravel soil, Brenwyn’s feet are silent in their bareness.

“Ja, some of the best times in my life were spent in this vineyard, and some of the hardest,” he says, his dark eyes restless, looking over the spread of vines, large circular saucers in their perfect natural patterns. “No, it was never Chenin Blanc, it was Steen – still is for me. When I started working here in 1978, the grapes went to the co-op. Then later, about 20 years ago, the farmer began selling to some winemakers. This is when things got all fancy, with these winemakers. Before, when it went to the co-op, we workers of the vineyards were also the farmers. We knew when to prune, to feed some fertilizer, break leaves, when to begin picking.

“But then the winemakers from outside came in with their viticulturist-things and really started bossing us around with stuff like green harvesting and planting weeds they call cover-crops and spraying some medicine over the vines just after flowering.”

Brenwyn stops in the middle of the long row of bushvines. “I can’t believe that next time this year, this will all be bare soil and the vines that are living here now, after all these years, will have been turned to firewood.” He shakes his head. “Makes me glad I don’t live on the farm anymore, but somewhere away from it where I won’t have to see the graveyard.”

He says he liked the pruning time best. “The winter winds would remind me how close this vineyard is to the sea, you’d smell shells and salt in the air,” he says. “It was cold, but pruning kept me warm, I was a quick one, easily cutting 800 vines a day.” Brenwyn drops to his haunches, takes a vine-shoot and makes a snipping morion with fore- and middle-finer. “Quick-quick, then get up and move to the next one. If you are young, it’s not tough on the back, but I did get slower in my 50s.”

We walk in silence, see a hawk drifting in the still azure sky. Brenwyn says harvest-time was also a good time. “I’ve always liked being a part of things that grow,” he murmurs. “Seeing the green shoots popping out in September, and the vine growing through spring and summer and making bunches with those gold-and-green berries, and tasting the sweet berries, this is a miracle.”

He puts his hands on his sides and looks at the sky. “It, the vines, these are miracles. I was ever only a farm-worker, a poor man. I now life off a Sassa grant. But I can say that once I worked with a miracle of nature.” He turns to me. “How many can say they worked with miracles?” He extends an arm and points his hand over the vines. “That’s what I have now, the memories of miracles, and it makes me feel almost rich.”

At harvest time, Brenwyn could pick one ton of grapes a day – 60 of those traditional thatched-reed ballas-mandjies. As an older man, he got to drive the load to the co-op. “There I smelled the grapes turning into wine. It smelled sour.”

I ask him if he likes wine. He shakes his head.

“Too much trouble,” he says. “When I was a young man, I’d – like the other workers – do anything for a bottle or papsak of wine, it made me strong then, and happy and funny. But it also made me forget what I was doing. And what I was doing to other people. So I have not touched wine for over 30 years.”

Looking down at his bare-feet, now covered with light grey dust, I ask him what he feels. He looks at the soil, the layer of gravel interspersed with runs of russet oakleaf.

“The roots are deep, so it is not always easy to hear what they say,” says Brenwyn, now lightly stomping his one bare foot on the earth. “But I feel they are resting, and they are tired, and – if I use my imagination – I feel they are happy in knowing they have given their all in this time they have been alive.”

He drops to his haunches and strokes the leaves of a vine with a particularly thick trunk.

“I think they are ready to go,” he says.

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