by Emile Joubert
A few years back I was talking to a friend of mine who owns a restaurant in London, and the topic was South African wine. She said that if she was forced to stock only one South African bottle, it would be Meerlust Rubicon, a red Bordeaux blend.
I found this interesting, as Meerlust is one of the country’s older wine brands — the farm was established in Stellenbosch in 1693, and its first bottled wine made in 1975. Since the 1990s there has been a dramatic increase in the number of wineries and wines in South Africa, yet in many circles the old farm of Meerlust is still seen as one of the best wine producers. The question of what gives Meerlust an aura and reputation allowing it to still stand out above the crowd intrigued me. I wanted to delve into the roots of Meerlust as a wine farm to discover its allure as a top producer, a status it continues to bear, perhaps now stronger than ever.
Meerlust: Beyond the Rubicon by Emile Joubert (Jonathan Ball Publishers)
Being a wine writer, I already had a fair knowledge of Meerlust and its wines, but for Meerlust: Beyond the Rubicon it was important to spend time interviewing the three winemakers in the farm’s history: Giorgio Dalla Cia (1978 to 2003), Chris Williams (2004 to 2019) and Wim Truter, who is currently in charge. It was wonderful to listen to these three guys’ varying approaches to creating wines from the Meerlust vineyards and how the farm’s geographical uniqueness and its nature inspired them in their respective lives as winemakers. The research and the writing once again showed me what a personal thing wine is, that the end result might be a bottle of wine, but it represents the personality, being and soul of the person that created it.
Solely for research purposes, we had to open various old bottles of Meerlust Cabernet Sauvignon and Rubicon, going back to the 1980s and early 1990s. Tasting these vintage wines surprised me, as it showed that Meerlust — and South Africa — makes wines comparable to the best in France. Yet, on the international stage, we as a wine-producing country do not get this recognition. Perhaps Meerlust and our other great wine farms will ensure we do so in the years to come.
The current owner of Meerlust, Hannes Myburgh, is the eighth generation of the Myburgh family to preside over this farm — the first Myburgh landed there in 1756. I was surprised to find that, despite the image of sophistication and wineland royalty the Myburgh name attracts, Hannes’s favourite dish to serve at his dinner table with a Meerlust Rubicon is a large pot of sheep’s offal!
Hannes is an extraordinary man of many facets involving art, literature, culture as well as a disciplined and committed realisation of his place on earth as Meerlust custodian. I only had one chapter to write on Hannes, and this was a challenge as he deserves a book on his own.
Dining and Cooking