Steak, slaai and skinder in S'Bosch

The about turn by Tim Noakes, UCT Professor of Exercise, that meat is good for you and refined carbohydrates ain’t, comes as no surprise to Rust en Vrede seigneur Jean Engelbrecht.  “We knew that 20 years ago” he said as he cut and braai’d a 12-man steak from “Rustenberg, Transvaal” last night.

Surgeon Jean

Jean was in fine form, letting slip he’d recently tried to acquire Dave Hidden’s Hidden Valley winery further down the Helderberg “as a home for our Stellenbosch Ridge brand.  We also wanted the restaurant but Dave wanted to keep that, so Charles Back [proprietor of Agter-Paarl] took the cellar.  We wanted Dave’s Helderberg fruit but weren’t interested in his stuff from Agulhas.”  But then that was presumably Sauvignon Blanc and thanks to a gout filled heel, Jean is very much a Chenin chap who switches to red as soon as possible.

On the subject of a Helderberg wine route, Jean pronounced himself a Stellenbosch man, thinking further sub-division was crazy for a foreign market already struggling to locate Stellenbosch on the global wine map.  As to the great Vindaba vs. Cape Wine 2012 debate, Jean came down firmly on the side of Vindaba.

“We won’t be at Cape Wine 2012 as the people who actually buy wine – tourists and the public – will all be at Vindaba.  Visitors to Cape Wine 2012 don’t buy.  Our foreign agents will come directly to the farm, anyway.”  If Jean’s point of view gains traction among producers, Cape Wine 2012 will be yet another WOSA damp squib, especially if importers of Italian, Spanish and South American wine take stands at Vindaba to showcase their wares to the wine buying public.

With the public banned from Cape Wine 2012, an industry battling for sales has clearly shot itself in the foot.  Vindaba is shaping up as a great marketing opportunity for foreign brands such as EJ Gallo and the various supermarket chains that import wine.

My pick of the Rust en Vrede reds lavishly opened with the steak and slaai, was the single vineyard Syrah 2009, with the ½ star demotion from 2008 in the sighted Platter Guide 2012 totally uncalled for, IMHO.  The 1694 Classification 2007 blend of Shiraz and Cabernet is clearly the other benchmark to the Meerlust Rubicon 2007, with all the other Stellenbosch red blends positioned somewhere between these two extremes.  For SA red blends, this is as good as it gets.