Nico Myburgh

Meerlust’s Monumental Cabernet Sauvignon 2021

~ Emile Joubert ~ 3 Comments

Expectations are there for the exceeding, an occurrence that is – for me – one of the greatest rewards for being embedded in the world concerned with the vineyard’s fermented offering. The daily partaking of a bottle of wine is one of life’s reliable joys: never mundane, consistent in the primal enjoyment thereof, yet startling in the diverse scope of sensorial experiences offered due to the endless array of varieties, styles and origins finding their way into your glass.

But when this experience is elevated from a passing daily pleasure to finding the magnificent and stupendous, joy and wonder being elevated to the realms of the surreal, this then when one feels this all-encompassing obsession with wine to be vindicated. A great wine makes it all make sense.  

It has taken me three days and two bottles of Meerlust Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 to reach the above conclusion, complemented by brief notes to fellow wine-loving mates that, among the steady flow of fine wines from the Cape’s current releases, this is one to take note of. For it is, as they say in the classics, a keeper.

The release of this specific wine, and the fact that it is a great wine, is suitably apt here in the year of 2025. For it was 50 years back that the first Meerlust wine – a Cabernet Sauvignon – was made for bottling under the estate’s label. Before then, from the farm’s establishing in 1693, right through the reign of the Myburgh family from 1756 until seventh generation Nico Myburgh took charge, Meerlust had sold its grapes and bulk wines to willing takers.

Nico Myburgh – father of current Meerlust proprietor Hannes – changed the family farm’s trajectory. He began planting the red varieties Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot – Chenin Blanc, Cinsault and Sémillon had for decades been the major cultivars farmed – which led to the first Meerlust estate wine being bottled from the 1975 vintage. The next step was the release of this maiden Meerlust Cabernet Sauvignon in 1978, instantaneously forging the brand’s perennial status as an integral part of South Africa’s premium wine offering.

Plainly put, the estate’s Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 is one hell of a wine with which to celebrate half a century of winemaking under the Meerlust label. And its sublime quality and sheer beauty will be of special satisfaction to the proponents underscoring Cabernet Sauvignon grown in the Stellenbosch appellation as the region’s foremost and most distinctive wine grape variety.

But further than this: when scrutinising a wine such as Meerlust Cabernet Sauvignon 2021, and scraping the memory bank for recollections of Cabernet Sauvignons from other Stellenbosch producers such as Kanonkop, Rustenberg, Alto, Le Riche, Ernie Els – to name but only a smattering – it has to be said that no other red grape cultivar grown in South Africa is capable of presenting an array of wines showing the degree of class and regal nobility that Cabernet Sauvignon does.

This 2021 vintage from Meerlust was made from grapes grown on both sides of the Eerste River cutting through the property. The one section of Cabernet Sauvignon vines is set on a slope on the river’s left bank, the plants rooted in decomposed granite soils and almost full-on north-facing, squinting into the midday and afternoon sun. On the opposite bank there’s more Cabernet Sauvignon, growing here on the sandy alluvial soils, a flatland that has for centuries been home to Meerlust vines, the roots finding generous, kind purchase in the loose soils that are for a large part of the year moist due their close proximity of the Eerste River.

As is noticeable as more wines come to market, 2021 was a great year for Stellenbosch reds. A late winter brought lashing cold fronts, with a cool growing season resulting in extended ripening periods delivering concentrated grapes of visceral territorial and varietal expression.

Back at Meerlust, the two different parcels of Cabernet Sauvignon got themselves vinified separately, the young wines underwent malolactic fermentation and were kept apart in barrel for six months before being assessed and blended to agreeable portions, then sent back to mature in oak barrels for another 12 months. Half the barrels were new.

Obviously, the prospect of opening and experiencing a new Cabernet Sauvignon vintage from a renowned a marque as Meerlust comes with a set of predetermined expectations of the positive side. But even the loftiest expectations were overridden here, buried, by the sheer splendour and magnificence of this wine which, in April, is already my wine of 2025 thus far.

It is about completeness, and about structure; balance and harmony; about a mannered, agreeable charm that holds one with both the gentle finger-clasp of flirtation and the needy grip of seduction.

The wine has an evocative maritime, oyster-shell aroma, notes often found in well-schooled Cabernet Sauvignon, but mostly on wines of greater maturity. The saline scent, however, quickly gives way to broody, shadowy notes of autumnal fruit and brittle sun-dried cedar.

Upon the first taste the immediate presence and the wine’s commanding structure leads to a comparison of this Meerlust Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 with some forms of non-consumable beauty. Evocative statuesque images that came to mind are a Michelangelo statue sculpted from Carrara marble; a leopard on its haunches, the golden spotted hide glowing in the late-afternoon sun as its coiled muscles await signals from the mind to unleash the body onto hapless prey; tennis goddess Aryna Sabalenka pummelling a cross-court forehand past a frozen opponent.

In this wine, the muscled tannins have been sculpted into forms of grace and beauty that bear the whole body from the beginning of the sip to the final sappy throes of its finish. The experience is all encompassing, riveting dense beams of classic wine-flavoured elegance covered with plush, broad layers of dark-fruited tapestries where plum, mulberry and blackcurrant are – at this stage of its development – discernible.

But the lasting impression of Meerlust Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 is the way the wine appears polished to a state of clarity and purity, placing it a long way down on the road to the unachievable destination of perfection. No wine will ever get there, but the distance Meerlust has reached is one only attainable by a remarkable few.

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Nico Myburgh: Meneer of Meerlust

~ Emile Joubert ~ 6 Comments

The first wines under the Meerlust label, Cabernet Sauvignon 1975, resulted from the vision of the late Nico Myburgh, 7th generation Myburgh on this Stellenbosch estate. Fritz Joubert, a retired journalist, remembers a remarkable pioneer who helped lay the foundations for the modern success of the Cape wine industry.

For wine-lovers of my generation the name Nico Myburgh will immediately herald an association with Meerlust Estate and its legendary Rubicon wine. Those who were fortunate to know him will, however, remember the nature of the man who, as its seventh generation Myburgh-owner, created the Meerlust brand that has become a global icon. The pride of South African wine.

One could describe Nico as a true man in full, an enigmatic personality and a farmer with a broad range of interests, as well as someone who could come to the fore with the irreverent and unexpected. Myself and my family got to know him intimately when in 1979 we found ourselves living on Meerlust for a few months. On the move from Cape Town to Paarl, our new Boland home was not yet ready and here Nico graciously stepped-in and offered to “put us up” for the required period.

Actually, this was probably due to my wife Maureen, who was at that time editor of the Wynboer magazine, today known as Wineland. Nico attracted women like honey does bees, and Maureen was one of his favourites.

Nico Myburgh

In any event, we had the privilege of staying in the Jonkershuis on Meerlust. And upon arriving on the farm after a day’s work in my Cape Town office the inevitable was to enjoy a few glasses of wine with Nico and his wife Eileen. This was always red wine – Nico did not have much time for white.

The bottles Nico opened usually came from the Meerlust cellar itself, unlabelled. One of these unlabelled wines that stood out for me was a Carignan, a deep-red, robust wine that Nico truly enjoyed in social circumstances. It never saw the market, however – Nico probably handed it out too generously and loved too much of it himself.

Only later would I discover the origins of Carignan on Meerlust. Eileen had smuggled some vine-cuttings from Argentina, inspired by Nico who was not the kind to subscribe to the conservative wine industry conventions of the time. Cinsault was at the time one of the most planted varieties at the Cape, but a cultivar for which Nico showed no interest.

For he was a man for Cabernet Sauvignon and had a vision to create blended wine of the type he had gotten to know in Bordeaux. Merlot, however, was non-existent at the Cape, so Nico had some Merlot shoots clipped in Bordeaux with the help of the legendary Danish viticulturist Vinding Diers and the contraband was ferreted to Meerlust with the help of a pilot friend.

Thus, more smuggled vines passing the KWV control board – Chardonnay was not the only illicit variety commuting through dark channels between France and South Africa.

On Meerlust the French Merlot vines were, under instruction of the legendary viticulturist Desiderius Pongrácz, placed in frozen storage until the nodes were ready for propagating.

Pongrácz, who at the time was involved at the Bergkelder, was the true inspiration behind a Meerlust Bordeaux blend. The making of the wine by Meerlust’s winemaker Giorgio Dalla Cia was one thing – finding a suitable name for it was another. Here Nico turned to the great Afrikaans poet and academic Dirk Opperman. In a sort of “Eureka” moment, Opperman said “Rubicon”, and so the mythical river had been crossed, so to speak.

One thing I remember about Nico was his directness and ability to sum-up a person immediately. Either he liked you, or he did not. As illustration he liked to tell a story of the self-deprecating kind.

On a tour with Wynboer to Argentina Nico found himself on the pampas where the gaucho cowboys were working the cattle with horses. There was also an opportunity for the many tourists to themselves get onto horseback. While Nico and another Wynboer guest were standing around a man came trotting by on his horse. Nico nudged his companion, pointing to the rider.

“Het jy al ‘n drol op ‘n perd gesien (Have you ever seen a shit on a horse before?)” Nico asked his pal in Afrikaans. The rider stopped and looked down at Nico, replying in perfect Afrikaans: “Het jy al ’n kont op die grond gesien? (And you, have you ever seen a cunt on the ground?).”

Unbeknown to the Wynboer-group, another South African party was also touring the farm……

I remember Nico’s fascination with baboons. And they unleashed all levels of havoc on the seaside farm he had at Potberg on the south Cape coast – Nico was an extraordinary, committed and accomplished angler. But the chaos caused by the baboons disrupted his joy of angling and being at the sea, and he unsuccessfully deployed scarecrows, rubber-snakes and any sort of primate-repelling gadget to keep the apes out of his house.

One day Nico opened the door to the Potberg house and saw that the baboons had, once again, been inside and made their usual mess. But there was something different about this troop’s particular visit: the apes had, genuinely, gotten hold of a pack of playing cards and had set-up a game before being disturbed by the master of the house. “There, on the dining-room table four hands of poker had been dealt by the baboons,” Nico told me. “But you know, one of the bastards must have been cheating because there was a hand that held five bloody aces.”

I am not going to doubt Nico’s eye for detail in the telling of the above story as he was meticulous and a true perfectionist, which could border on the cantankerous. One day myself, Nico and my youngest son Fritz were having lunch on Meerlust before heading off for a week-end’s fishing at Potberg. Fritz was seated next to Nico as the mutton and vegetables were being enjoyed, and Nico saw the kid was struggling to get his peas onto his fork.

“No son,” Nico reprimanded Fritz, “not like that. Here on Meerlust we eat our peas this way,” he said, illustrating how the peas were to be eaten from the back of the fork and not scooped with the bottom-end.

The experts will have one believe good wine is made in the vineyard. But looking at where Meerlust is today, a brand glowing with provenance and legacy in tandem with the quality of its fine wines, I believe the souls of the people behind such wines play as vital a role as any in their success. Of this, Nico Myburgh is a fine example.

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