From Poor Tom!:
The 1971 Swartland Pinotage is mind-blowing. I've got a question about a Gilbeys Director’s Reserve Tinta Barocca 1969: who was the wine-maker and where could I get some background information about the old Gilbeys?

Tim James replies:
This question arose out of Michael Fridjhon’s comments on an old Cape wines tasting he organised (and a truly wonderful experience it was, sampling those wines going back to 1940). I also remember Michael serving me a very good and lively (though somewhat rustic) Bertrams wine from the mid-60s once. So I thought he would be the best person to ask about this, and he says:  

I know/knew the wine quite well: it was sold as GDV [Gilbeys Distillers and Vintners] Reserve Bin 1969 and I remember Stanley Goldberg telling me it was made at Kleine Zalze. It was a limited release – the story being that because it had turned out to be too good to blend away they did a very simple labelling (a bit like the Delheim special releases from the early 1980s) maroon print on cream in a claret bottle with the vintage info "typed on" in black. Head of winemaking at Gilbeys in those days was Dr Arnold Schikkerling (a name for the wine trade) and he was responsible for the Bertrams wines - Gilbeys premium range at the time. The early 1970s saw some pretty smart Cabernets, Pinotages and very old style Shirazes and I recall Gilbeys winning the Jan Smuts Trophy at the young wine show a couple of times in that era - at a guess 1975 being one such occasion. I've had a few old Bertrams wines in the past decade and some have held together quite well.

The first edition of South African Wine (by Dave Hughes and Phyllis Hands) has a page on Gilbeys, outlining its history. It supports Michael’s one suggestion, by saying that Gilbeys bought De Kleine Zalze (as Kleine Zalze was then known) in 1968. The following year their first wine was made there. In fact, Gilbeys Distillers and Vintners, or just ‘Gilbeys’, as it was known, had taken that name in 1970 – previously it was Gilbey-Santhagens. The Gilbeys take-over of Bertrams was only in 1972. Michael Fridjhon's own Penguin Book of South African Wine of 1992 also has a few pages devoted to Gilbeys, and probably so do other older books about Cape wine.