When Wilhelm Linde, former winemaker at Nuy, recently offered a tasting of 25 vintages of his Muscadel, an enthusiastic Melvyn Minnaar was there

Since long before walking off with the one and only Diners Club Winemaker-of-the-year award ever on offer for muscadel, way back in 1989 (so much for local enthusiasm!), Wilhelm Linde has had no real contenders for the title Mr Muscadel. Not that he likes such fuss.

For 33 years winemaker at one of the most charming, lowest-key co-operative wineries in the country, nobody could claim to have done more for the shiny, full-sweet stepchild of Cape wine than Linde. One record speaks for itself: for no less than 22 years there has been a Nuy Muscadel on offer at the Nederburg Auction.

After the 2003 vintage the softly spoken (on the rare occasions that he does actually speak!) Linde retired from Nuy. There he had made a wide range of wines, with the eager support of the 21 member-owners who deliver annually to the effective little winery in the scenic kloof off the road between Worcester and Robertson. But he has perhaps been best known for the smart fortified sweet wines he crafted  from white and red clones of muscat de frontignan.

Of its making he comments: ‘The winemaker has a mere 36 to 48 hours to put his stamp on a wine which might even outlive him. During those first hours, the grapes are mulched, given skin contact (an intuitive thing), stirred through, juice separated, skins pressed and everything fortified at 16.5 percent alcohol. Very little, if any, fermentation is allowed.’

Given the out-of-the-spotlight way Linde and his team at Nuy operated, his departure didn’t attract the notice that is his due for contributing so well to keeping alive the spirit and tradition of classy Cape muscadel. While Nuy continues to produce its famous white and red versions of this fortified wine – and promises to carry on doing so – it is evident that an era has passed.

One of Wilhelm Linde’s personal passions and pleasures had always been the magic of ageing muscadel in the bottle – few wines can last virtually indefinitely like these ones made from spirit-fortified muscat grape juice. At a recent tasting, characteristically low-keyed, Linde offered 25 vintages of both the red and white versions – representing a quarter century of devotion to the very South African tradition of ‘full-sweet’ muscadel.

Spread out, the range offered everything from pale green-gold youthful wines to ‘intellectual-experience’ brick-amber older ones. A rigorous formal tasting of the whole line-up of some 50 white and red muscadels would have been a massive job – and not, anyway, Linde’s way of doing things. So his guests at this ‘muscadel experience’ took the trip at their own pace, moving around as they wished – privileged travellers on a bottled sunshine journey.

Some tasted here and there, others from youth to maturity or the other way around. It also seemed a good idea to return from time to time to check a mental note or renew acquaintance. And the best taste rewards came to the fore when we sipped some over a light meal – and what fun it was to match the aged variations with food.

Adding a formidable element are, of course, the substantial alcohols: between 16.5 and 17 percent (even just sniffing gets the stuff into your bloodstream and to your emotion). The sweet tones and overtones of some 250 grams per litre of sugar also don’t help to make it easy tasting a whole range. And then there is the power and lingering extent of those perfumy aromas – which seem to come into full bloom as the wine passes the age of five years. The wines are often surprisingly complex, with great length. It makes one wonder why old-world ‘classicists’ don’t punt the stuff more often.

Of course, part of the problem with muscadel is that it doesn’t easily fit into the traditional food and eating structures. In other words, it is not always easy to find or construct a social occasion to open a bottle of atmospheric wine with high sweetness and alcohol.

Seeing the row of Nuy muscadels lined up – one side, white, the other side red, from young (2003 vintage, both colours) to old (1979 red, 1985 white) – carried its own sense of nostalgia.

The 1985 white was the wine that won Wilhelm Linde the coveted Diners Club Winemaker-of-the-year award. Twenty years on it still has a remarkable presence: lively, darkening amber colour; full nose of nuts, flowers and a gentle raisiny quality; rich, warm in the mouth with spirit taking the complex taste into a lingering finish. A musical muscat.

The 1987 red won the Jan Smuts Trophy as the most promising young wine of any made in South Africa that year, and it seems as if the judges had an extraordinary vision then! The deepening mahogany has an edge of green which suggests life, if not youth; there’s a forceful caramel/chocolate nose with a touch of savouriness, the wine soft and velvety in the mouth with fruity length.

Tasting the 1987 brought the issue of cork taint to the fore – it doesn’t spare even high-sweet wines like these. Among the 50 wines, a few of those with flange cork closures showed faults. Whether it was always cork to blame was not clear. Nevertheless, the wines with screwcaps had none. Curiously – and these is a lesson here, surely – all the Nuy muscadels were screwcap-sealed only until the mid 1980s. (The 1987 red went under cork, the white stayed with a screwcap.)

From an aesthetic point of view, the cellar also changed its delightful, old-fashioned label at the end of the 1980s. The bold, clear, romantic gothic type on matt cream paper with pristine no-nonsense Afrikaans copy made way for something they obviously thought fancier. Since then it has been modified again, as has the bottle shape. Most fans would agree that, design-wise, it has not been improved. Nuy Cellar would do itself a favour by looking again at the original designs and screwcaps. It may even make sense to revisit the design from a marketing point of view – and to go for the traditional look. These muscadels, after all, are very deeply rooted in our Cape wine culture.

Devotees of muscadel, bemoaning the lack of market and other interest, and the confusion among producers out there, have sometimes wondered whether Linde’s decidedly low profile, despite the quality of his wines, wasn’t a negative for muscadel, which desperately needs some higher public imager or image-maker. In the 1980s, for example, when many of his wines got ‘Superior’ ratings year after year, he refused to use the gold stickers, insisting that it was what was inside the bottle that mattered....

On a wider scale, despite the formation of a Muscadel Association half a decade back, there has been no real effort to make the public aware of these traditional treasurers. It seems as if no one really knows how to go about it – including telling consumers when and how they should be enjoying these age-worthy wines which offer such remarkable value for money. Most modern-day wine lovers do not know what to do with, or make of, something as fabulously satisfying as a Nuy Muscadel which has been waiting twenty years in the bottle to offer its delights.

• Nuy has made some older Muscadels, stretching back to 1982, available to admirers and hedonists, in the ‘Wilhelm Linde Collection’. As Linde says: ‘It is difficult to even think of any wine of which 25 different vintages have ever been offered in this way. Personally, it represents a lifetime.’ Various packages are available, ranging downwards from R920 for 18 bottles. Current vintage 2004 costs R40 for two bottles. Contact Nuy for further information (Tel: 023 – 347 0272).