On first appearances, an autobiography entitled Viking in the Vineyard may pique your curiosity. It has a memorable quality to it, but it’s unlikely to inspire you to take it off the bookshelf, less still open a copy and begin reading.
There may be millions of books which pass unnoticed for this — or many other — reasons. The difference here is that of most of my life in the wine industry the name of its author — Peter Vinding-Diers — has popped up in the most unlikely places.
While I did not know him when he was learning his trade in the Cape, we met briefly in Bordeaux (when I was finding my way in the world of fine wine), and our paths have crossed obliquely several times since.
Born into Danish aristocracy, educated at Eton, connected to things French via his father’s first wife (and through her to the Renoir family of film and Impressionist painting fame) he found himself with opportunities (but no real qualifications) just as the 1960s were building up a head of steam.
Travel to the East by sea (a trip which took him around the Cape), a self-imposed stint with the US military in Vietnam (to test whether he was made of the same mettle as his mother, who had been in the Danish resistance) and he began to think he might want to be a vigneron.
He went back to Europe where he met his future wife Susie — an English theatre sister working in Jutland. Young and in love, besotted with the Cape and with no real reason to remain in Europe, the newly-weds set out for SA — undeterred by a letter of rejection from the KWV whom he had approached for a job.
On arrival in the Cape, Susie began work almost immediately at Groote Schuur, while he phoned around looking for employment. An incomplete degree from the Sorbonne and a stint in Vietnam are not ordinarily qualifications which guarantee you a position as an aspirant winemaker — but this was SA in the 1960s.
In his words Sydney Back took pity on him and gave him his first job — and a primitive piggery manager’s house which might today seem like a squat, but which the young couple turned into a homely cottage.
After that, their lives seemed to move forward on a momentum-fuelled roll: from Backsberg to the wine research station at Nietvoorbij and then to Rustenberg. His account of working for, and with, the legendary Reg Nicholson is wryly entertaining — and revealing of life on a Cape wine farm in that bygone era. But it was here where he really began to learn his craft — useful preparation for his return to Europe and a position with Gilbey’s Loudenne in Bordeaux — just as the wine market crashed in 1974.
I spent 1975 in Montpellier but I escaped whenever I could to work and learn in the more mainstream regions of France. I did two stints in Bordeaux, where the late Martin Bamford, Master of Wine, kindly took me under his wing at Chateau Loudenne. There I met Vinding-Diers: he had suddenly (and unexpectedly as far as he was concerned) become head of production for Gilbey’s Bordeaux negociant wine business.
He wasn’t there long, and his next stint (Chateau Rahoul) turned out to be my next oblique connection. His arrival there coincided with the acquisition of the chateau by a group of Australians, several of whom subsequently became my friends and mentors, so I “met” Peter in the next stage of his career through their eyes.
His view of the key Australians — as it emerges in the book — is not wholly sympathetic, but he learned a great deal from his travels to Australia, and in return taught his Antipodean acquaintances some of the winemaking strategies he had devised. He stayed at Rahoul for 10 years, driving quality and lifting its stature. He also bought his own vineyard (Domaine La Grave) and landed up running the Australians’ Barsac chateau.
The book is a bit of a Norse saga — connecting a vast number of players from the colourful and eccentric community of the world of wine. It is replete with stories of acts of incredible generosity, and an equal number of anecdotes about some of the shadier folk who have lingered too long in the galaxy of the fine wine trade.
It’s a rollicking, riveting read which takes you from his earliest engagement with wine, his naive but clearly happy existence in SA, through the roller-coaster years in Bordeaux, his extensive travels and achievements as one of the first “flying winemakers” to his current and very settled existence in Sicily.
It is a measure of the esteem in which he is held by so many of the great figures of the trade that the book is littered with notes and messages from the likes of Hugh Johnson, Miguel Torres, Eben Sadie, Etienne le Riche, Jean-Michel Cazes and the late Steven Spurrier.
While much of it reads like the diary of a country house guest, the Viking’s eye for the humorous twist-and-turn is always there. The account is rich in detail about the people and the events which shaped the wine world during the past half century.
For South Africans with an interest in the era when the wine industry began its long slow climb out of the potjie of mediocrity which the KWV imposed upon it, it is an essential and very satisfying reading.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.