Elegance and classy restraint in its wines mirror one of the finest Cape-Dutch restoration projects.

Turn off the Annadale road, in the Helderberg area, into the yard of Webersburg, and you cannot but be impressed by the effort that the Webers have put into the restoration of this smart Cape-Dutch compound. A recent vertical tasting of the property's cabernet sauvignons confirms the wines to be a match in style.

Fred Weber, his wife Annelize and daughter Monique, who runs the guess facilities, have polished the historic buildings to perfection, with a stylish sense of understatement. The real architecture of the late 18th century have, in a manner of speaking, just been cleaned-up, lovingly restored, sensibly fixed up for comfortable modern living. (It's a five-star guest house.)

The same lack of extravagance underpins the graceful wines that Fred Weber, who established his foothold here in the mid-1990s, offers under his name. He doesn't aspire to more than the eight hectares he currently owns, delivers, and the sauvignon blanc that joined, a while back, the club of two red bottlings, is more a hospitality gesture than anything else. Red, expressing the Helderberg soils in cabernet sauvignon specifically, is what it is all about.

Both Webersburg wines - the one a 100 percent cabernet, the other Bordeaux-styled - were conceived to be classic, with moderation in flavours, texture and expression. Structured to age beautifully over some years. Needless to say, this reflects the philosophy of Giorgio Dalla Cia, who has been consulting since the first vintage in 1996. (The wines have all been made at the Meerlust cellar.)

Matthew van Heerden, for the past five years or so, the winemaker of the beautiful wines just up the hill at Uva Mira, is now working with Dalla Cia here at Webersburg. It makes perfect sense in many ways, also because he is engaged to Monique Weber. (A top-class family wine clan thus in the making.)

The vertical tasting took in all the cabernet sauvignon wines from vintages 1997 to 2006, except 2002. Partly the purpose of the exercise was, said Van Heerden, to gauge how to carry forward what has been achieved and established.

If he was worried about a consistency in Webersburg style, he need not have worried. The wines was delightfully terroir-driven, showing up vintage variation. How to continue is a different matter and challenge.

The tasting delivered two very bright stars: The 1997, which was exquisitely fresh and perfumed for its years, with lovely secondary aromatics and length with years to go. The 2004, a five-star wine, if ever there was one, with clarity and all the components (structure and a wide array of flavours) in place for a long cellar journey.

Not that the other wines were a let down. The 2005, also on release right now, is fuller and fruitier with floral notes, while the 2003 held up everything about that brilliant vintage. It has year ahead still.

* The story behind Fred Weber's acquisition of this attractive property (the manor house's gable is dated 1786) is a good one. A visit there even more so.