To celebrate the heritage of Meerendal Wine Estate, the new restaurant on the farm was aptly named 1702 Heritage Kitchen, indicating the length of time the estate has operated as a farm.
Dr Winifred Bowman of Camps Bay, a Cape Wine Master and family friend, said at the official opening last Wednesday evening of the formerly-named La Romantica, that the farm boasted two of the oldest vineyard blocks in the Wine of Origin Cape Town district, which includes Philadelphia, Cape Town and Constantia.
Original pinotage developed
Its 5-hectare heritage pinotage block, planted in 1955, is related to the original pinotage cultivar developed by Prof Izak Perold in 1925.
The other is its historical 25-vine row of Muscat d’Alexandrie (also known as hanepoot), which dates back to 1938 or earlier and is registered with the Old Vine Project. The vines are certified as the oldest-producing vineyard in the Wine of Origin Cape Town district. It is the same cultivar the very first wine was made of in South Africa in 1659.
Wade Roger-Lund, cellar master, said it is his pleasure to work with a block of pinotage that is double his age.
“I also get to work with a row of Muscat that is three times older than mes,” he said. “So, before my parents and my grandparents even thought about my parents, that block of Muscat was there. The cool thing about that block is that in 1947, when the late Queen Elizabeth, then a Princess, was visiting Cape Town she sat on the manor-house patio and had tea, overlooking those vines, according to diary entries.”
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