This month it’s five years since I lost my dad to cancer, and I miss him every day. Will my instinctive urge to call him for advice ever go away?

Born in Berlin in 1934, Gunther Simon left Germany with his parents in 1936. A fiercely proud Joburger, he attended Parktown Boys, studied law at Wits and UNISA, and acquired (among varied interests) a love of cricket that his parents could never comprehend. But he certainly embraced his German roots later in life, right down to wearing socks with his sandals (how fondly I remember the things that once made me cringe!).

Perhaps not surprisingly, one of his favourite wine farms was Delheim, owned by the Sperling family. Nicknamed Spatz (“sparrow”), Michael Sperling didn’t know much about winemaking when he left war-ravaged Germany for Stellenbosch in 1951, but he was soon hosting pool parties (apparently as legendary as my own Oma’s Witkoppen ones) during which his many new winemaker friends would gladly accompany him into the cellar to taste his wines until he got them right. One tank, however, elicited famously unconstructive criticism: “But Spatz, this is now really dreck.”

Determined to make his critic eat (drink!) her words, Spatz perfected his semi-sweet “Spatzendreck” – complete with its cheeky label of a sparrow pooping into a barrel – for the 1961 vintage. It quickly became one of SA’s best-loved brands, a success story now celebrated in the Late Harvest’s reincarnation as a sophisticated Natural Sweet made from muscat de frontignan, weisser riesling and chenin blanc.

Truly a Collector’s Item (only 2400 x 500ml bottles produced), the Spatzendreck 2013 with its orange blossom and apricot notes, and fresh acidity cutting through 129.8g/l of residual sugar, tastes all the sweeter to me for having evolved into the only style of wine my dad still enjoyed towards the end. R165 ex-cellar.

NOTE: First published in Sunday Times Food Weekly, 8 June 2014.