LIQUID INVESTMENTS
MICHAEL FRIDJHON: Blend with French oenologist mellows enfant terrible
For a man who was once the enfant terrible of the Cape wine industry, Vergelegen’s Andre van Rensburg has mellowed rather well. Except for the occasional outburst involving his pet hatreds — pinotage and the Swartland — he has not made headlines for so long that his employer, Anglo American, has been able to focus on its core businesses.
It now emerges that what has kept Van Rensburg out of harm’s way is his working partnership with Michel Rolland, the French oenologist whose worldwide consulting activities have included Vergelegen since 2014.
Van Rensburg has finally emerged from the cocooned stillness of the fabulous "winery on the hill" to share, with unbridled enthusiasm, the results of Rolland’s input. As Hamlet said: "That would be scann’d."The very idea of Van Rensburg entering willingly into a collaboration with a man who has been praised for "modernising" bordeaux wines, but also excoriated for stripping them of their "classical" austerity, seems inconceivable. But here he was, wandering around Gauteng armed with BR (before Rolland) and AR (after Rolland) samples to show evidence of the transformation. The experience could only have been a little disappointing for those expecting a miracle along the lines of the wine of service at Cana. For everyone else however, the tastings were nothing short of riveting. Rolland’s influence, especially regarding wine style, has been controversial. In the 2004 movie Mondovino, about the globalisation of wine styles, he is depicted as an enthusiastic proponent of technological i...
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