First impressions make lasting impressions, so best make them good ones! My first impressions of Rust en Vrede have proved lasting and good ones.  We had bought Jannie Engelbrecht’s maiden 1979 Shiraz but soon found one or two of the corks weren’t doing their job that well. Okay, that wasn’t so good, but the response was. After a phone call to Engelbrecht informed him of the problem, the whole case was replaced immediately.

Replaced and enjoyed many years ago, for which I’m thankful for the farm’s cabernet of the same vintage would have given more pleasure when it was a good deal younger and just R1 a bottle!

This wine – now a strange mix of mellow flavours contrasted by sharpish acid - was the first in an historic line up, covering four decades and three of the four winemakers at this Helderberg property, presented on the occasion of the launch of their latest – and very different – vintages. A different owner, too; Jean Engelbrecht, Jannie and Ellen’s son, is now the firm hand behind this smartly run property.

The snapshot the five wines gave of the last 32 years traced the evolution of South African red wine over that period.

Back in 1979, the alcohol level in that cabernet would have been around 11.5% - 12%; I have to guess, as there are no records, but that is the general level of reds of that era. In today’s terms, it seems extraordinarily low, but it’s not the only reason for that cabernet’s thin, austere feel. It was de rigeur in those days to add acid to all reds; because of the virused state of the vines, the grapes would have struggled to reach suitable ripeness, all of which adds up to the wine as it presents itself some 32 years later. But that’s as things were then, especially with late-ripening cabernet.

From 1979, we jumped to 2000 and Louis Strydom’s Shiraz (a jump too in price, though ‘still under R100’ Jean E confirmed.) Alcohols have not reached today’s levels, though there’s noticeably riper, richer fruit and sweetness imparted by American oak and dictated by the growing US market, which found previous vintages too austere.

Three vintages of the Estate wine made up the rest of the tasting; 1989 and 1995 (both made by Kevin Arnold) and Strydom’s 2004. It was this wine – always cabernet led with shiraz and merlot – that Arnold hoped would eventually be the one and only wine in the range. That hope was never realised; ‘it’s not an economic viability,’ Engelbrecht explains. Indeed the range has expanded over the past few years; a single vineyard cabernet is also on the cards.

As vintages progressed, so did the increase in balance, interest and modernity; the 2004 shows good harmony of fruit and structure with oak in a more supportive role. It still has a way to go to reach smooth maturity and is worth keeping for that goal.

As much as this change was directed by the US market, which now accounts for half of the 50% exported, it was also aided by the whole 36 hectares of vineyard being replanted in 1997. As so many producers have discovered, clean vine material has led to increased sugar levels in the grapes and more efficient yeasts have, in turn, led to those higher sugar levels translating into higher alcohols, so it is with the current releases presented at lunch in the celebrated Rust en Vrede restaurant.

Rust en Vrede Cabernet Sauvignon 2008, Shiraz 2008, Estate wine 2007, 1694 Classification 2007 (a shiraz-cabernet blend) and the single vineyard Syrah 2008, couldn’t be more different from those early vintages. Even if alcohols do in some, reach a giddy level of 15%+, they are balanced and there are no edgy bits, in fact the wines are alarmingly accessible even at such an early stage of their lives. Full-bodied and polished they may be, but there is also a freshness to them, which ensures the necessary compatible partnership with food, with which they are more enjoyable.

Chef, David Higgs’s dishes all had interesting touches and were incredibly tasty, but also allowed the wines to take centre stage.

Higgs and Rust en Vrede restaurant have been showered with awards (and feet through the door) since the opening in 2007, so it’s not surprising that the restaurant has had a huge influence on wine sales from the farm, today accounting for 25% of value turnover. Photos adorning the restaurant walls show the various farm buildings under restoration; the restaurant itself was the old barrel cellar.

At the same time, it would be wrong to ignore Engelbrecht’s influence and the input of the whole team; they really do all work from the same page.

What Engelbrecht writes in his letter which welcomes guests to the restaurant, sums up what Rust en Vrede is all about. ‘On arrival you would have noticed the gardens, roses and flower beds for which the foundation was laid by my mother, Ellen. Today we build on that and our responsibility is to ensure that they are always in an immaculate condition.’ No detail is forgotten, as the immaculately polished brass name plate on the gate posts shows.

First impressions of Rust en Vrede for visitors in 2011 are as good, if not better than all those years ago they were for us. No wonder the farm, its wines and restaurant are among the most popular in the winelands.

After experimenting with Chenin Blanc, Jannie decided to stick to red wines and this marked a rebirth of a new era in the South African wine industry. The Helderberg wine region in the perfect place to grow red wine cultivars and Jannie was quoted saying that you have to be a really bad winemaker, to screw things up. Ever since Rust en Vrede has scooped up numerous international awards and became the first wine estate in South African to have a red wine on the Top 100 Wines of the World list for four consecutive years.

Today, Jean Engelbrecht continues to build on the good foundation that his father laid. He is focussed on growing the business beyond all expectations and determined to leave a great legacy behind for the next generation. Jean welcomes competition and says that private producers should focus on their market and commit to it.  It’s impossible to compete with the big producers and therefore wine farms should look at the consumers who support them and ensure that these groups are satisfied with the end product.

Upon my visit to Rust en Vrede I was lucky enough to taste some of the estate’s older vintages and we kicked off the tasting with a 1979 Cabernet Sauvignon, the year of my birth! According to Jean the wine was advertised in a 1983 Wynboer magazine for R12.90 for a case of 12. Imagine that!

Rust en Vrede prides themselves in their Shiraz and the 2000 vintage, did not let them down. This was a big year for Rust en Vrede when winemaker at the time, Louis Strydom, decided to produce more fruit driven and juicer wines. This can definitely be picked up when comparing the older vintages with the younger ones.

Coenie Snyman marked his first harvest at Rust en Vrede in 1997 and went on winning quite a few awards, including Diners Club Winemaker of the Year in 2009. His passion for the farm and the wine industry shines through in his wines and one can understand why Rust en Vrede is South Africa’s Premium red wine estate. One of the current vintages is the Rust en Vrede 1694 Classification 2007 and if you have some cash to play around with this is definitely a wine for your cellar at R1200 a bottle. It’s a blend of 58% Shiraz and 42% Cabernet Sauvignon and it’s not the price-tag that makes the wine so appealing, it’s the elegant structure and the to-die-for palate. The 2008 Single Vineyard Syrah is set to retail at R850 a bottle and if you are a wine collector this is a must for your collection. The wine spent 18 months in a combination of French and America oak barrels of which 75% was new oak. It’s a rich wine, bursting with flavour and bound to be a stunner a few year down the line. Both wines reflect the uniqueness of the Stellenbosch terroir and are true beauties!

Apart from their super fantastic wines, the restaurant at Rust en Vrede also made a clean sweep at the 2010 Eat Out Awards when they secured all three major awards.

David Higgs walked away with the Best Chef Award and the restaurant won the Best Restaurant of the Year and Service Excellence award. So, is it really that great? Well, yes! It’s actually more than great and a real treat to experience the food and the vibe, paired with the estates fine wines. Rust en Vrede is everything a fine dining restaurant should be and to top it all, the man in charge of the kitchen is one sexy piece of meat! Attention to detail and great service is the aim of their game and you can be sure of a memorable experience.

Looking back at my time at Rust en Vrede, it’s easy to understand why they are one of South Africa’s most premium and iconic wine estates. They don’t pretend to be something that they are not, and quite frankly, they don’t have to, cause they are all that! It’s a special place that plays a big part in the history of our lovely country and I’m proud to have a bottle of their wine in my humble collection.

To me, Rust en Vrede is very special; it being the place where I grew up and still live today. Accolades such as these are not achieved without sacrifice, determination and commitment. Over decades many people have contributed to our success: most notably my parents and family, Kevin Arnold (winemaker, 1986 -  1997), Louis Strydom (winemaker, 1998 - 2004, and today heads up production at Engelbrecht Els Wines), Coenie Snyman (winemaker, 2006 - present), and of course David Higgs. I thank my colleagues who have always been willing to go the extra mile and I thank our patrons without whom this remarkable feat and achievement would not have been possible.

Regards,

Jean Engelbrecht

FORGIVE me if I’m excited, but I can’t help it. I want to tell you straight out that South Africa, of all places, is one of the greatest sources for moderately priced cabernet sauvignon on the planet today.

I suspected this before, but after the wine panel tasted 25 South African cabernets recently, I can say it unequivocally, without the usual hedging and qualifications.

Well, almost, but I’ll get to that later.

First I want to focus on the exciting news. If you like cabernets that are balanced, with a sense of structure and shape, that are indisputably cabernet sauvignon with flavors of cassis and violets, cedar and minerals, then you are going to love these wines.

In bottle after bottle, including one to which the panel gave a rare top rating of four stars, the defining characteristic was balance. These wines were not over-the-top fruit bombs, although, yes, we did find a few of those. Nor were they soft, plush and syrupy. They demonstrated power, but they also showed finesse. It would be a pleasure to serve our favorites with all sorts of different foods.

It would be tempting to characterize these wines as more Bordeaux than California, but I think that’s too easy. A more accurate and meaningful comparison would be to liken these wines to Napa Valley cabernets of 25 to 30 years ago, a time before so many California producers began picking grapes that were riper than ripe, thus producing Napa red rather than Napa cabernet.

These wines would never be called weedy or thin, although some California producers might sneer at them as “green,” simply because, like Bordeaux and an earlier generation of Napa cabernets, they offer herbal flavors like mint, sage and thyme. In my opinion, these flavors are not only appropriate but even delicious within the cabernet spectrum.

Not that we found any of our South African wines harking back to the bygone days of 12.5 percent alcohol.

No, these are potent bottles, most of them around 14 to 14.5 percent alcohol. But because they are so well balanced, they don’t feel too big. Nor do they feel self-important or grandiose — not at these prices, which are decidedly moderate by Napa standards. For the tasting, by the way, Florence Fabricant and I were joined by Paul Grieco, an owner of Hearth, Insieme and Terroir in Manhattan, and Rebecca Foster, a representative with Empire Merchants, a distributor.

South Africa is not exactly the first country that comes to mind when one is thinking of good wine, at least not among Americans. In fact, many people do not associate South Africa with wine at all, which might be somewhat surprising when you consider that wine has been made there for hundreds of years.

We’re more concerned with recent history, and for much of the second half of the 20th century, when wine exploded as a global commodity, South African wines were largely off limits to the rest of the world because of the country’s apartheid policies.

In a way, the resurrection of the South African wine industry is analogous to the rebirth of wine producing in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. There’s been a lot of catching up in a very short time.

South Africa has caught up, and how. Just consider our No. 1 wine, the 2004 Stellenbosch cabernet from De Trafford, which we awarded a top score of four stars.

“Hallelujah!” exulted Paul, who found aromas of cedar and tobacco in the glass and declared it a wine of “absolute terroir.” Florence and Rebecca both concurred, finding it rich yet graceful and structured. I was a touch more hesitant in my assessment (but only a touch) because of the ripeness of the fruit. But in the end the structure dominated the power, giving the wine shape and agility. A price of $32 for a wine like this makes it a great deal.

If it had been only one wine that impressed us so much, we would not have been nearly so excited. But there were plenty of others, like our No. 2, the 2004 Stellenbosch cabernet from Rust en Vrede, a balanced, well-shaped wine with beautiful aromas of flowers, fruit, minerals and herbs, and our No. 3, the 2003 One Stroke One from Stellenbosch, which balanced lightness with intensity. In South Africa, by the way, One Stroke One goes by the name of its producer, Graceland Vineyards. In the United States, I guess, Elvis got there first.

While the four-star De Trafford could have been our best value in the tasting, I decided instead to give that honor to the least expensive wine in our top 10, the 2006 Bon Cap, a $15 wine made from organic grapes that had lovely aromas of flowers, fruit, herbs and, yes, bacon.

Skip to next paragraph There did seem to be some relation between price and quality in these wines. Of the 14 bottles in the blind tasting that were $20 or under, only the Bon Cap and the 2004 Neil Ellis at $20 made our list of favorites. By contrast, 8 of the 11 most expensive bottles made our top 10, including the 2005 Stark-Condé at $40, which just squeaked in at No. 10. This wine, from the Jonkershoek Valley, a subdivision of the Stellenbosch region just east of Cape Town, was powerful and a little rounder than some of the more structured wines, yet it was still in balance.

Almost all of our other favorite cabernets came from the Stellenbosch region, practically on the southwestern tip of the African continent and centered on the old university town of Stellenbosch. The area is blessed with weather as gorgeous as the vistas for which it is renowned. The Bon Cap was the lone outsider, coming from Robertson in the Breede River Valley to the east.

Well, I’ve been all breathless enthusiasm up to here. Now it’s time for my hedge.

In California, where producers used to strive to make wines like these, the trend in the last 15 years has been to pick grapes later and later, resulting in big, overly alcoholic wines of surpassing fruity sweetness but little shape or structure. These are the wines that have mostly received the greatest praise and for which producers have charged the most.

Could such an evolution occur with these South African wines? I can’t answer that, but I see some possibly disturbing notes.

First, the 2006 Boekenhoutskloof cabernet from the Franschhoek region was, at $47, the most expensive wine in our tasting. While the winemaker is critically acclaimed, we rejected the wine for its generic vanilla-cherry cheesecake flavors, which I often taste in New World red wines that are intended to please an international audience.

Second, while we all loved the 2004 De Trafford cabernet — our No. 1 wine — a look at the De Trafford Web site indicates that the next vintages are evolving in a bigger, riper direction. The 2004 was 14.5 percent alcohol, but the ’05 and ’06 are both well above 15 percent. Admittedly, I haven’t tasted either of those wines, but on paper at least they seem ratcheted up in size.

If anything, our tasting indicates that South Africa has the potential for greatness. In the snapshot offered by these 25 bottles, we found a region offering wonderful values and lovely wines.

Yet the track record is slim. We don’t know yet how these wines will age. Many of these producers are too new to have shown consistency over time.

Winemakers cannot change the soil in which they plant their vines. Nor can they influence the climate or change the weather. The main thing they can control is the style of wine they make.

We very much enjoyed the styles of cabernet sauvignon we sampled, and we appreciate the fact that the winemakers’ sites and climate permit them to make cabernets in these styles. As for next year and the year after that, we hope for the best.

Tasting Report: Cabernets, Here Defined by Their Balance

De Trafford Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon 2004

$32

****

Ripe yet structured and graceful with aromas and flavors of rich fruit, flowers and cedar. (Importer: Boutique Wine Collection, Philadelphia)

Rust en Vrede Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon 2004

$27

***

Aromas of violets, minerals, earth and herbs; well balanced and nicely shaped. (Terlato Wines International, Lake Bluff, Ill.)

One Stroke One Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon 2003

$28

***

Light-bodied and intense with aromas of blackberries, flowers and herbs. (Fairest Cape Beverages, Santa Ana, Calif.)

BEST VALUE

Bon Cap Robertson Cabernet Sauvignon 2006

$15

** 1/2

Balanced, earthy and well structured with flavors of fruit and a touch of bacon. (Indigo Wine Group, Venice, Fla.)

Thelema Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon 2004

$33

** 1/2

Elegant and restrained with balanced, delicate flavors of fruit and herbs. (Cape Classics, New York)

Neil Ellis Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon 2004

$20

** 1/2

Dry and cedary with flavors of blackberries and minerals. (Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, Ala.)

Bilton Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon 2004

$25

** 1/2

Nicely structured with pretty aromas of flowers and plums. (Southern Starz, Huntington Beach, Calif.)

Waterford Estate Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon 2005

$29

** 1/2

Big, bright and fruity yet balanced and structured. (Yellowwood Wine, Calistoga, Calif.)

Alto Estate Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon 2005

$30

**

Ripe fruit and earthy flavors with a spine of acidity. (Tafelberg Imports, Emerson, N.J.)

Stark-Condé Jonkershoek Valley Twin Peak Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2005

$40

**

Pretty floral aromas; powerful yet balanced. (Vineyard Brands)

WHAT THE STARS MEAN:

Ratings, from zero to four stars, reflect the panel’s reaction to the wines, which were tasted with names and vintages concealed. The wines represent a selection generally available in good retail shops and restaurants and on the Internet. Prices are those paid in shops in the New York region.

Tasting coordinator: Bernard Kirsch

RUST EN VREDE
1694 Classification Stellenbosch 2006
93 points / $110 / 100 cases imported / Red

Impressive, large-scaled wine that offers loads of currant paste, braised fig, beef, roasted earth, tar and graphite notes, all backed by grilled herb, aged tobacco and bittersweet cocoa on the finish. Very dense, but the fruit and tug of earth should merge fully with cellaring. Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon. Best from 2010 through 2013. – J.M.