DeMorgenzon Blog
Yearly Archives: 2010

  Here is the first half of the fifth installment of ‘How we Came to Swim in the Wine Lake.’   I had intended telling you how marvelous De Morgenzon’s grapes are looking and how they’re ripening with the promise of a great 2011 vintage, but here I am again, self-indulgently rattling on about the work we were doing before we landed up on top of a mountain in Stellenbosch.  I am still often asked about the ‘The Wind-up Radio.’ With this project we hit the international media. Our little foundation in deepest, darkest Africa (well, Braamfontein, Johannesburg actually), had its… continue reading →

  I still haven’t got round to telling you how we came to be tending vines and making wine. I have, it seems, been meandering along a self-indulgently autobiographical path.  Here is the fourth installment of ‘How we Came to Swim in the Wine Lake’ or ‘How Green was My Vineyard’ (with apologies to Richard Llewellyn).   Vigorous and well constructed.  ‘Holism,’ In wine making, is obviously a lot more than the romantic concept of growing and making beautiful wine that expresses it’s origin and has a carefully managed environmental impact. Holistic means addressing the wine value chain in its entirety… continue reading →

Here is the third installment of ‘How we Came to Swim in the Wine Lake’ or ‘DeVine Comedy’ (with apologies to Dante). Do reds always improve with age? We go back to those heady days in the early 1990s when I thought I was really important. Liberty Life was then one of the 5 companies that controlled the South African economy and it had a role, albeit minor, in the process that culminated in transition and transformation. The Multiparty Negotiating Forum had succeeded CODESA as the forum in which South Africa’s future was being decided. The negotiations were dramatically interrupted… continue reading →

Here is the second installment of ‘How we Came to Swim in the Wine Lake’ or ‘The Grapes of Froth.’ For those of you who involuntarily missed the first, it lives on in cyberspace on De Morgenzon’s facebook page. I shan’t bore you with an autobiography (which is a wonderful vehicle for telling the truth about other people) but will both reminisce and bring you lots of information. Much of it will be useful, some may be amusing, some annoying. If I become intolerable hit the ‘defriend’ button. How sweet is a sweet white? To bring you up-to-date … I… continue reading →

Before I tell you about “cheeky little whites”  (which sounds like a discussion at Luthuli House) or “robust reds” (those people in that discussion) I thought, in Maria’s immortal words, that I’d “start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.” My father had come to South Africa from France and we, as children, had always had wine at the table. This may explain something about us. Wendy and I have always loved wine. We met in 1978 … in our early days together we drank many a bottle of Alto, Rustenburg, Zonnebloem and, our favourite, those early… continue reading →