What a devilish idea! And why not indeed. So we did just that. Some days later, as we sailed past the island of Madagascar, the skipper came back and tugged my sleeve. ‘Can I buy back the champagne?’ he whispered to me furtively. ‘I don’t really know,’ I replied: ‘You had better ask Mr Taylor.’
Dennis agreed, and the company bought back the stock of champagne for just enough cash to keep us in free champagne for the trip. Not a dry eye –ours, because the skipper had had to buy back the champagne and we had a good laugh about it; his, because he was Dutch and had to pay!
Later, Dennis told me that he had seen a telegram on the desk in the Durban office commanding the captain to celebrate the engagement of the Dutch Crown Princess Beatrix to Mr Claus von Amsberg with a glass of champagne for everyone onboard. We all had our share of the champagne that evening!
We docked in Mauritius for 24 hours and the Taylors very kindly asked me for lunch at their home at the Point d’Azur, which was sheer heaven. They were such fun, and many years later we met up again, thanks to my English wine trade friend Robin Byers, who knew them both very well.
SAILING INTO SINGAPORE HARBOUR IN THE MID-1960s was like entering an adventure from One Thousand and One Nights. As we arrived that evening, with a myriad lights bobbing up and down on the water outside town, we could have been sailing into of one of those much-loved tales of the Islamic
1 Vindings and Renoirs, our families (related by marriage) get along very well. From left Yolande (girlfriend of Jacques), PVD, Jacques Renoir, a friend of Nana’s, Nana Vinding (my father’s first wife and sister of Coco Renoir’s wife), Claude Renoir (son of Coco, grandson of the great Impressionist painter Pierre-August Renoir) and Denise Renoir. 2 My father’s portrait painted by the experimental Danish modernist Vilhelm Lundstrøm. My father refused it! 3 Birgit and Ebbe Munck at the Danish Embassy in Bangkok.
It was Ebbe who told me to go to Africa and begin my wine adventure. I never looked back. 4 My Aunt Mutte (left) – who married Bill Cavendish-Bentinck – with my mother in Copenhagen. When Mutte came from London in a cloud of expensive perfume, we were all there to greet her. She was incredibly sweet and funny, and her irony was legendary. 5 Susie in her smart Austin Sprite (only 40 were made of this model), whizzing into the courtyard at Rosenvold, Iver Rantzau’s place.
A DREAM OF VINES AND WINE
Here, we helped him remove the wild oats that had been allowed to grow everywhere, and saw him transform that lovely old property into one of the best-run in the country. He didn’t have salt to an egg either. But we ate well and cheaply. We would go down to the fjord to collect mussels, then manage to find a bottle of local plonk over which we’d talk and laugh our way through the evenings after work.
Iver’s future was secure, more or less, so the topic of conversation began to dwell on my idea of growing vines and making wine. Nobody thought it strange and I got all the encouragement I needed from both my friends and family. But the benediction I really needed came from Susie, and throughout it all she stood by me. So how to get a foot in?
A good friend had a brother-in-law who was in the wine business, and who by chance imported the wines from the KWV8 in South Africa. He wrote to them but I got a negative answer back. I knew deep down that this was where I wanted to go, so this rejection presented me with an extra challenge. Constantia was still playing in my head – the lovely old farms, the green vineyards and clement climate drew me in much more than those of France, where both my father and grandfather were well-known personalities with far too many contacts for a young man who was everything but his father’s son.
So one evening at Rosenvold Susie and I decided to get married and set off for South Africa anyway. Susie wrote to the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town and got a job immediately, so we had something to fall back on. The visas and permits took a few months to sort out, but one day a package from the legation in Stockholm dropped through the letterbox. ‘Best wishes for a happy and successful future,’ it said.
1 Heading for a long and happy life together: Susie and I on our wedding day, May 4th 1968; Iver Rantzau gave the bride away. 2 The visa from the South African embassy in Stockholm with the note ‘Best wishes for a happy and successful future’. 3 My rejection letter from the KWV with Sydney Back’s telephone number written in pencil: I got my first job by calling this.
4 Saying goodbye to friends at the Central Station in Copenhagen. From left Peter Rosting, Karen Wedell-Wedellsborg, Lise Mayer, Sybille Reventlow, Torben Secher, Annedorte Kjaer, Susie, Ditlev Knuth-Winterfeldt and PVD.
carry on the Rustenberg tradition. There was, however, one more hurdle. I had still to be vetted by the chairman of IDV, Robin Kernick, who was coming out to Stellenbosch from London and who wanted to see me before adding his benediction to Martin’s generous offer.
I still remember the balmy evening air as I drove home after a pleasant talk with Robin at Gilbey’s, the IDV headquarters in Stellenbosch. He was another charming person with great culture and knowledge, and a very cool sense of humour to boot, which appealed to me greatly. In other words, we got on very well and I received a telegram from Martin a couple of days later confirming my appointment.
Robin Kernick came back into our lives later as chairman of Corney & Barrow, wine merchants and importers of our wines, and I am glad to say that he has remained a lifelong friend.
But now it was time to leave Africa. Our belongings were packed into a container ready to be shipped away. We stayed a couple of nights with Merete Tesdorph before Reg drove us to the airport, where we bid a tearful farewell.
MANY YEARS LATER, we returned with a group of growers from the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux (UGC) and I met Piet, the old foreman, Martha Mumba, our delightful nanny, and her father Farson, with whom we had an emotional reunion after a reception at the old house at Schoongezicht.
We also had time for a visit to Christa, who was alone now that Pongie Pongrácz had died in a road accident. He who had survived the war, the gulag and the prison in Hungary, had come to an untimely end in a freak collision. He had just finished the manuscript of his European History, and was waiting for it to be printed. Tragically, it too, disappeared, just as suddenly as he did. It is a great sadness that Pongie was denied his life, and the legacy that this book would have allowed him to leave. Christa was as brave as ever, and took these brutal shoves with immense dignity.
By this time, many things had changed in South Africa, and the country we had known – with all its problems and all its charm – was a lovely memory, a thing of the past.
Part 3 Adventures in Bordeaux
Jean-Michel Cazes
Legendary winemaker and owner of Château Lynch-Bages, Médoc
Bordeaux Blanc: leader of the revolution!
In the 1970s and ’80s I took care to visit Château Loudenne in the northern part of the Médoc as often as I could. Loudenne –which belonged for a long time to the house of Gilbey’s – was a haven, not just of peace but of lively parties too, led by the very civilized Martin Bamford. Of course, one met a few Bordeaux natives, but above all the culture was English: there was the wine merchant Peter Allan Sichel, president of the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux, Bill Bolter, also a négociant, the Johnson-Hills of Château Méaume, and John Salvi, a scholar and gourmet. The stars of the English wine press were also there: Hugh Johnson, Nicholas Faith, Jancis Robinson, Steven Spurrier and Margaret Rand...
Then there was Peter Vinding-Diers; of Danish origin, he and his delightful English wife Susie would often visit from Château Rahoul, their vineyard in the Graves. Peter had built up a reputation for making white wine thanks to the experience he had gained during his time in South Africa. With his advice back then, the white wines of châteaux Rahoul and Loudenne became recognized as some of the great successes of Bordeaux.
CHATEAU RAHOUL: BORDEAUX
MY WAY
(1977–80)
Château Rahoul, with its lovely chartreuse manor house, was built by the knight Guillaume de Rahoul in the mid-17th century at a time when the vineyards of the Graves were by far Bordeaux’s most prized. Guillaume’s family lived there happily until the French Revolution but thereafter, its story becomes less easy to define, as the mighty Médoc began to obscure Graves from view. In 1977, David Robson, who had owned Rahoul since 1971, told me he wanted to sell up and move south. ‘Can you find me a buyer?’ he asked.
A few months later John Davies rang me from Château Lascombes and told me that two Australians were in Bordeaux taking a tour of the châteaux. ‘I think they want to buy Château d’Yquem!’ he told me, laughingly: ‘But see if you can help them find something else.’ Yquem was impossible. It was not for sale (at least at that time), but what about Rahoul?
Len Evans was ‘Mr Wine’ in Australia. A most amusing man with a vast knowledge. As a promoter, taster, teacher, judge and maker of wine, he had turned Australia around from drinking beer to wine virtually single-handedly. Not a bad feat! Peter Fox, who accompanied him, was one of the nicest people I have ever met. He had started from nothing, and was now a very wealthy tax lawyer. He also loved wine, and Len was his teacher and mentor. When they both understood that Yquem was out of reach, they began to look around for something else. I took them to Rahoul where David gave us lunch and showed us around the place. There were 14 hectares of vines, which made a little white wine and a red that needed improvement.
David had restored the house immaculately, and – even if a former owner had ruined the original pretty baroque details of the place turning it into a notary’s dream – the outhouses, especially the orangerie, were still there to remind one of its former beauty. David had also built a big swimming pool.
It had been interesting to explore the area around La Clape, but we didn’t find anything on which we could build a new life. So we returned to Rahoul and agreed that we would leave. Although the owner had originally said that we could stay until the end of the year, he had now changed his mind, and so with the help of our good friend Bruno Borie – who owned Château Ducru-Beaucaillou in Saint-Julien, and who at this time was busy restoring the apéritif house Lillet, next-door to Rahoul in Podendsac, to its former glory4 –we moved our furniture and paraphernalia into one of his warehouses, which we filled to bursting point!
Tony Laithwaite from Bordeaux Direct immediately offered us the small flat above his offices near Bergerac, and then another good friend, Michael Walker, told us that we could move into his ‘presbytère’ in the Lot. It was not a million miles away from the old gentilhommière that Martin had lent us, and we loved our stay there. The house was filled with books and a good spirit that took care of both the buildings and us. Michael used to say: ‘It is yours, and if I come by, I do so as your guest!’ Once again, we had learned who our friends were.
Another was undoubtedly Olivier Bernard who invited us for a grand farewell dinner at Domaine de Chevalier: a huge crowd was assembled and we felt very honoured. He served our wines from Domaine la Grave as well as his own, which we felt was a sign of real respect and great friendship. We have been great friends ever since, and when we got to Château de Landiras (of which, more later) I invited him to join the board.
I would say that the style and pathos of our last few years at Rahoul could well be set to the music of Beethoven’s 1812 Overture, or perhaps Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf would be more appropriate. Both are good candidates, but in the end it must be the last act from Puccini’s La Bohème that wins, where Rudolfo sings his goodbye to Mimi, a beautiful lover.
4 Bruno Borie bought the family business Lillet in 1985 and revised the formula of this 85% Bordeaux-15% liqueur apéritif, making it fruitier and less bitter, to wide acclaim. He sold the business in 2008 to Pernod-Ricard.
Part 4
A World of Winemaking
Brazil and Almaden was a happy project, helped along by the wonderful open-mindedness of those I worked with. I would visit once a year, during the vintage, which is in July – a quiet time at home. The whole thing lasted about three years before IDV decided to diversify and sell up all its vineyard holdings. When the European Wine Company was under way I suggested to Jan, in London, that we should add it to our South American portfolio and we did try to make this happen, but unfortunately Seagrams pipped us to the post. It was sad, but what fun those years had been!
THE BULGARIAN PROJECT began with an invitation from Tony Laithwaite (owner of Bordeaux Direct and my importer in the UK). He was talking to VinProm, one of Bulgaria’s largest wine producers, based in Sofia, which wanted to bring its wines up to date, and would I help?
Susie and I took a plane from Heathrow and the check-in controller waved us a tearful goodbye as we left. ‘You don’t know those old planes!’ he cried: ‘You will never make it to Sofia…’ So off we rattled, with no harm done. We were met at the airport by a deputation of men in dark suits and (were they communist regulation?) tinted glasses, then marched through customs – where all our co-passengers had their belongings turned inside out – into the fresh air with our passports stamped. There, waiting for us, was a huge black limousine. We were then sped to the best hotel in town and told that the evening was ours. We could go anywhere we wanted in Sofia, and drink and eat to our hearts’ content. All we had to do was to sign the bill and the government would look after the rest. Instead we went to bed. The rattling plane having taken its toll on us emotionally!
The next morning we met Tim Bleach, Bordeaux Direct’s brilliant wine buyer, who was to become a great friend over the next years. We climbed into a small Volkswagen Kombi and set off on a tour with the three great players of the Bulgarian wine industry. Margo Todorov was the central figure; he was founder of Domaine Boyar, the first private winemaking venture to be established in post-communist Bulgaria. He had taken the decision not to export his wines to the Eastern Bloc but instead to sell them to the West. When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989 this move would save his country, as more than
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80 percent of incoming foreign money was to come from the sale of Bulgarian wines. Tony Laithwaite was one of Margo’s key European contacts, and the two were also great friends: business between them was about to boom.
Next to Margo sat Hristo Dermendjiev, the VinProm director of winemaking. Hristo was a Bulgarian aristocrat who had somehow, in spite of being anti-communist, survived the dark times; I suppose it was because he was one hundred percent honest, immune to bribery and corruption, and extremely professional.
A view across the well-equipped tank room at the Almaden winery, Brazil – here nestled the wines of 1,200 hectares! 2 Rosana Wagner, the lab chief at Almaden, with Alesio Rodrigues (right) and the highly competent vineyard manager.
An aerial view showing a little of Almaden’s vast acreage.
The entrance to Almaden.
heads in the soil, waving their roots in the air like a forest of tiny baobab trees. They had been planted upside down!
Professor Sotos and I met up again in Madrid the following day. We sat in the smart office of the Grupo Inversionista Murano (who still owned the farm), each of us placing the blame squarely and vociferously in the other’s camp. But it wasn’t just the two of us. As the ‘enemy’ camps sat and screamed at each other, I studied a fly that was desperately trying to commit suicide in a drop of water on the polished table. Then I looked out of the window. Out on the street a bus drove up and out flew a group of noisy school children, like a storm of starlings; amid their racket a teacher herded them into a line before marching them through the door of the Prado museum opposite. In a moment they would be immersed in the drama of Goya’s wonderful pictures, some of which poke fun at the kind of incompetent civil servants I sat next to right now in that hot office. In the end, the plantsmen had to take responsibility, which in a way was correct, but…
BACK IN BORDEAUX I had lunch with Wum and we commiserated over the ‘Spanish problem’. Someone would need to be there full time to manage the situation. And then I had a thought. What about Ping? For some time he had worked for Zelma Long2 in California, and had now just got a job with my old friend Paul Draper at Ridge, the crème de la crème of American wineries (Paul is deeply serious about his vines and wine). It seemed a shame to drag him away from such an exciting position but we agreed that for Peter – he would obviously use his real name now – to oversee a big challenge like this would be better than working for someone else. He would have all the responsibility, and if all went well, all the glory.
I called him and made the suggestion, not hiding the fact that it would be a rough ride, that the vineyard was situated well beyond all civilization, so far away, in fact, that even the crows never reached it. I told him that this was no ‘California’: that when the wind brewed into a howling storm it could
2 President of Simi Winery from 1989 to 1996, Zelma Long is greatly respected for her skilful winemaking and high-quality pioneering work with Bordeaux varieties.
A happy reunion in Madrid: Hans, Susie, Ping and myself. In Spain, Ping held on through thick and thin and brought fame and fortune to the vineyards of Ribera del Duero.
wear down the very stones of the village houses, and that it bit with a brutal Siberian chill. But he took all this on the chin; he came to Ribera del Duero and changed everything.
Peter went to live at Monasterio (he still does) and was able to assimilate the terroir, the history and the people of the place so that after a few years, he knew exactly what to plant and where. The Bordeaux vines that were installed – eventually the right way up – may not have been the best choice, but with Peter’s guidance many of them grew strong, and their grapes eventually became an excellent complement to the local Tinto Fino (known as Tempranillo elsewhere in Spain). It was three or four years before the vines were ready for Peter to make wine and by that time he had found new investors, so the EWC was out of the picture – as was I. But he came to visit us in Bordeaux with samples and they were very good indeed. Hacienda Monasterio is now one of the great names of Ribera del Duero; no longer such a backwater, it sits on what is called the Golden Mile, a 15-kilometre stretch of road that is home to some of the finest bodegas, producing the most sought-after wines in Spain.
On one of Peter’s visits to Bordeaux he brought with him a sample of a wine he had made from a small vineyard nearby that he had leased from an old man. The vines were age-old, and the wine itself, well, it was something
while remained totally intact. To make the local farmers understand that single vineyards would give us the better wines – and they eventually did – was an immense struggle. One or two good men kept the company afloat while I was back in Bordeaux – taking over from István Szepsy when he left – and I eventually found a young Frenchman, Samuel Tinon, who came from Saint-Croix du Mont in Bordeaux who did what Ping did in Spain: clung on when the finances got tough and held everything together. But I had to find him in France! (Samuel has now branched out on his own; he bought a fantastic hillside site in Olaszliska and lives there with his family specializing in the rare dry ‘Szamarodni’ wines, made from the same grapes as Aszú.)
WHEN THE FINANCIAL CRISIS ARRIVED,
Peter Aagaard wanted to concentrate on a big investment he had in the States, and so the hunt began to replace him with new investors to secure the future of the RTWC. It was not easy, but we all felt that something had to be done to save what had now become a passion for all of us. We were lucky, and after many ups and downs we found ourselves with Nigel Wilson, who looked after millions (often for charities) in the City of London. Under his chairmanship we moved forwards at a steady pace. A new house was bought as our headquarters, and the capacious (and very beautiful) cellar next to it was filled with machinery and tanks. We felt that things were moving in the right direction.
1 The tasting team for one of our first visits to Hungary. From left Our translater, Peter Aagaard, Wum Kai-Nielson, PVD and Hugh Johnson.
2 Almost a ‘family’ group. Susie with Ats, our cellarmaster at The Royal Tokaji Wine Company, me, and Judy and Hugh Johnson. 3 View into the old-fashioned garden at our lovely old village house, the Andrássy Kuria, with its traditional arched arcade. 4 Wum and I on the banks of the Danube in Budapest with the Hungarian parliament buildings in the background. This was on our exploratory visit; after a
disappointing first bottle of Aszú our fortunes changed for the better. 5 My work desk at the Andrássy Kuria with tasting notes, family photos and a glass of something red and refreshing.
6 The underground cellars at Andrássy Kuria, walls lined with carboys full of maturing Eszencia – the sweetest and most luxurious of all Tokaj wines. Eszencias will traditionally ferment in glass vessels too. Beyond the gate lies the barrel cellar where my precious four-puttonyos wines were stored for the required eight to 10 years before they were ready for sale.
A WORLD OF WINEMAKING
know that we have found our place. Sicily is all about humanity, faithfulness, good friendships and honour. It can be tough and raw, and it is not for the faint-hearted, but if you take on the challenge you are given here the island opens its arms and envelopes you in its spirit. Goethe told us that nobody knows Italy who has not been to Sicily. His trip here was the worst he had ever experienced, but somehow the island got into his heart.
The descendants of the old Norman families who made a halt here over 900 years ago still have that inimitable sense of humour you find in Jutland where both they and I have our roots. This is another reason I feel so at home.
Now in the dusk of life, we make a stop, just as I did so many years ago near Grasse where it all began, and take in the scent of the jasmine, honeysuckle and flowering oranges. The view and the stars over the Mediterranean are very much the same, but I think we have now fulfilled that far-away dream we started with. Many byways have led us here, and sometimes perhaps we’ve taken a wrong turn, but now somehow it has all been worth it.
Beethoven’s Triple Concerto conducted by Herbert von Karajan with Mstislav Rostropovich, David Oistrakh and Sviatoslav Richter on the piano has been a good friend to us during many hard hours and it has always cast light where there was darkness. Here at Montecarrubo its heartening solos cheer us still as we sit with a smile, a handful of olives and – why not? – a glass of wine.
Peter Vinding-Diers
Montecarrubo February 2021
1 A family visit: Susie and myself with Anders and his two boys, Lorenzo and Rudolf. 2 Susie and I captured by my cousin Jacques Renoir. We’re standing by the age-old carob tree (carrubo in Italian) which gave its name to the farm.
3 A visit to Krengerup in Denmark, the second estate of my oldest friend Iver Rantzau. From left Elisabeth Rantzau, Iver, Benedikta von Freyberg, Susie, PVD and Rudolf von Freyberg. This was a great trip in which we were united with our
dearest friends. 4 Back in Sicily after a trip to Tuscany: we always love coming home! 5 Hans (with the smart hat) and Anders all smiles with the boys, Lorenzo and Rudolf. 6 Hans and his family in Argentina: his wife, Maria Belen, holds their little son Juan Andreas while Francesco (Maria Belen’s first son) looks inquisitive! 7 The road to Montecarrubo: it climbs 130 metres up to the crater of an old volcano; you can study the strata of limestone and lava along the way.
