Haute Cabrière Cellar Restaurant

Goosestepping in heels

A taste of 800 years of Prussian military history.

Visiting the dungeon-like Haute Cabrière Cellar Restaurant in Franschhoek is like stepping onto the set of The Name of the Rose. It's very murder mystery, very "Who killed Professor Plum?" Even the wine farmer, Achim von Arnim, staggers onto set.

 

"I feel a bit fragile today," he confesses, slowly buttoning up his black leather waistcoat as he climbs out his Toy Story car, a 1966 tomato-red Citroën Decheuvaux. "Get in," he insists upon spying my skyscraper rooibos heels.

I'm being kidnapped by a giant of a man who hails from 800 years of Prussian military nobility, a man who learnt to dance with Arthur Murray. "But I dance best with my bookkeeper, Mabel," he mumbles.

He whisks me away from the wine farm to check out his latest paintings in his art studio, a neat pied-à-terre overpowered by a row of tall, silent, Agatha Christie cypress trees and a David Lynch picket fence. Inside are large canvases of naked, star-struck maidens with mountainous bosoms and Pinot Noir nipples glowering at me.

"I f***ing use anything," he enthuses, "Tipp-Ex, charcoal, paint..."

Like a young fashion designer using too many fabrics - satin, tartan, denim, lace - in the same dress, it's way, way too much. His earlier crayon-on-paper and charcoal-on-paper artworks of his wife, the gracious Hildegard, fully dressed, hold more promise.

I veer the subject away from art and ponder whether this giant with wild, fangled, silver brows perchance went to Toumani Diabate in concert at St George's Cathedral. You know, Toumani, the spiritual master from 71 generations of Mali Kora players?

"I like the Rolling Stones," smirks Achim as if reading my mind, and we head off to lunch for some serious sniffing and marathonesque swigging. "Most of the boys don't want to sniff, they just want a reasonable wine to drink where they don't feel terrible the next morning."

Achim's eldest son, the cellarmaster Takuan, is at our table. He is named after a Japanese monk. "It means pickled radish," beams Achim. Takuan is not very chatty and calls his father "sir", but after a few bottles of fancy Haute Cabrière he opens up like a fine bouquet and addresses his father as dad.

It's unfortunate that Achim's younger son, Tamo, is not here today. Tamo, like the rest of his family, prides himself on being ¼ Prussian, ¼ Swedish, ¼ French, and ¼ Italian. He is feted as one of Cape Town's gay literati and was conceived, no doubt, on Pierre Jourdan Cuvée Belle Rose as, on our first meeting, sharing his poetry, he famously said: "I was conceived on Champagne. I definitely slept my first day on earth. I was pissed!"

Achim pours me a glass of vino and then, slowly, like Kaa the snake in The Jungle Book, leans over and hisses conspiratorially into my ear, as if about to share an ancient family secret: "Of course, the first bottle always tastes wonderful, the second is disappointing and the third even more disappointing, so we'll have to try the fourth," he winks, "just to check."

We then drank so much I honestly can't remember exactly what we drank. We did have fizz. Yes, I remember bubbles in a glass. Perhaps it was the Pierre Jourdan Cuvée Reserve. I remember commenting on the mighty-fine rushing bubbles to which Achim perfectly chirped: "Like sperm to an ovary." I also remember eating a plate of comforting polenta with Haute Cabrière Pinot Noir 2006 and after our meal we had the 2003.

I'm sure it was very good. In fact they were all very good. I just don't remember the finer details.