Memories of Stellenbosch and South Africa’s finest wines

Lockdown provides time to think, and to reminisce. A South African friend, trapped in Amsterdam, phoned the other day. Had I written about the David and Nadia wines from Swartland we had tasted at the end of last year? Not yet: I was awaiting further particulars, which may have been remiss of me. Justerini and Brooks is a major stockist and they are some of the best wines coming out of South Africa, which is saying a lot.

Wines have been produced in South Africa since the Huguenots settled in vine-friendly lands not far from Cape Town. Stellenbosch, Paarl and the aptly named Franschhoek are well known. Swartland is catching up. The names take me back to so many evenings in the 1980s, drinking wine in Stellenbosch and discussing the future. My Afrikaner friends knew that fundamental change was inevitable. That, at least, was their intellectual judgment, even if some of their hearts were still lagging behind. But there was a lot of interest in some fancy constitutional arrangement that would mitigate democracy and avoid the surrender of all power to the ANC. F.W. de Klerk had already concluded that this was a fantasy. Until shortly before the dramatic hand-over of power, that was still a minority view in Afrikanerdom. But F.W.’s realism prevailed. Had they known the quote, a lot of Afrikaners would have agreed with Lord Derby’s comment on the Second Reform Bill: ‘A leap in the dark.’ With Margaret Thatcher, they also recognised that there was no alternative. Robin Renwick, sometime ambassador to South Africa and her most important British adviser on its future, has written a fascinating book, The End of Apartheid, which makes it clear that her views were not the same as her husband’s. Instinctively, Denis could see no reason for change in such a wonderful country.