MICHAEL FRIDJHON More smart, hardline offerings from Luddite
The latest releases are a shiraz, which delivers plush fruit, and the delicious Saboteur white
Niels Verburg launched his Luddite brand 21 years ago while Cape wine was still conquering markets worldwide. Rand weakness made even the sale of bulk wine a profitable business. The prescient, lucky few who connected credible-sounding brands with access to the UK supermarkets parlayed enterprises conceived over a couple of liquid lunches into multimillion-rand operations.
Their route to wealth creation was not what Verburg had in mind. Something of a rugged frontiersman (he farms in Botrivier, beyond Elgin and closer to Caledon than the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley), Verburg conveyed his intentions in a perfectly designed brand he called “Luddite”. A label that looked as if it had been block stamped (and that is still hand numbered) was the packaging message of an equally uncompromising shiraz...
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