“Afterwards, we’d go to his study and listen to some more music – good jazz! He loved jazz – smoke some cigars and have a little grappa and a coffee.”
Tinged with sadness and nostalgia, these were some of the moving words spoken by former Meerlust cellarmaster, Giorgio dalla Cia at the memorial for Giulio Bertrand, held at Morgenster in Somerset West recently. He painted a picture of two Italian men, lovers of life, food, wine, women, music, culture and philosophy – far from the country of their births. Although Dalla Cia no doubt won’t be comfortable with the comparison, both these men have made deep and decisive impacts on the local wine fraternity, and their influence will be felt for years, if not decades, to come.
Soon after meeting him at Meerlust for the first time in the nineties, Giorgio discovered that they had a shared love for the philosophy of Seneca, the ancient Roman who wrote such apposite things as: “Reputation is a great inheritance” and “Retirement without study is death, and the grave of a living man.”
Those words are appropriate because some years later Giulio “retired” to Somerset West, buying a long neglected wine estate and setting about restoring it. “I heard about this Italian renovating the manor house – so went to see him.”
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