A humble star

There's nothing as past-it as a past chairman," said the past chairman of KWV, Danie de Wet. "I'm a has-been now," he said gloomily, pouring a golden glass of his 1981 De Wetshof Riesling. "This one comes from the year of the Laingsburg flood. We had 30% botrytis which gives that richness and a perception of sweetness."

Could this be the best SA Riesling I've ever tasted? I wondered as I watched the "has-been" surrounded by a table of diners hanging onto his lips as the insights and anecdotes spurted forth, like the fountain on the lawn outside the tasting room.

"Danie, the TV crew is ready for you now," and he was off to powder his face. Saturday lunch on De Wetshof during the Robertson Wacky Wine Weekend was moved to the voorkamer of his Koopmans- De Wet recreation that serves as tasting room. Outside with the punters was hopeless as he'd be mobbed and have no chance to eat his foie gras or sip his edeloes ‘80 with all the ‘hallo oom, hallo tannie' and kissing going on. Although his political days may be over, Danie is busier than ever, and the proof is in the glass.

His 2009 Nature in Concert "is the best Pinot Noir I've ever made" and his two unwooded Chardonnays, Bon Vallon and Limestone Hill 2009, are in the same ballpark. "Chardonnay doesn't need wood. I don't want an oompah band in my mouth," Danie told assembled wackies gathered for a Chardonnay masterclass in the cellar earlier in the morning. "Lees contact adds another dimension to the wine, similar to wood."

Although son Peter is now making the wine together with Mervyn Williams, and other son Johann may be called a Gareth Cliff look-alike by 2oceansvibe. com and a "blond hottie" by Heat magazine, when it comes to tutored tastings, Danie has forgotten more things about Chardonnay than are taught on a tasting academy weekend and is without doubt the Cape's Chardonnay celebrity.

Upstairs in his office sits the desk and chair of Cecil John Rhodes while the silver coaster on the table was property of one Louis Botha whose statue stands outside parliament, inscribed "Louis Botha". Those wishing to make a stereotype of Danie do so at their own peril. Take the trees lining the driveway, for example. They were planted a year to the day of the death of his friend Ponky, or Freiherr Desiderius Pongrácz, a Hungarian nobleman who survived Stalin's Siberian gulags, only to fall victim to Stellenbosch traffic. An arboreal memorial.

Ponky brought a passion for sparkling wine to SA, a passion shared by Danie's son Peter who has several cuvées developing complexity on their lees as I type. It must be something to do with all those medieval etchings on the walls of De Wetshof, gifts from Ponky to the family. Danie tells of the time the Freiherr decided he needed a wife and a German Gräfin von Chicowicz was available, even if the lady was a decade his senior. "It's a joke but contains a kernel of truth."

Marching into the Somerset West Magistrate's Court, the Freiherr clicked his heels, saluted and announced that his noble self and the Gräfin requested to be married. Perhaps Piet Dreyer (of Raka fame) was dragooned as witness, as he was a public prosecutor there at the time.

"If you wants to play the fool, bugger off!" shouted the magistrate, chasing the couple from his court. For who would expect Teutonic nobility to marry in Somerset West? Or a farmer from Bonnievale to befriend a Hungarian refugee.

Neil Pendock is wine writer for the Sunday Times and Financial Mail.