When Madame May-Eliane de Lencquesaing, matriarch and founder of Glenelly Estate, won the Lifetime Achievement Award—they should have given her a few trophies for all of the lifetimes she’s lived.
Born into one Bordeaux's oldest wine families, the Miailhe, Lady May as she’s fondly known, has lived through World War 2, has been an army wife in Kansas; and at the age of 78, bought a fruit farm in Stellenbosch and starting planting vines on the slopes of the Simonsberg.
“One of the reasons I came here was out of respect for the French Huguenot culture,” says Lady May, addressing me in her private residence on Glenelly. With the A-frame thatch roof, it’s a cool place to be on a mid-summer’s day in the Boland. “They came here with only their vines and bibles—nothing else, no furniture or personal belongings. I have to admire that courage.”
No stranger to bravery herself, during the occupation in WW2, Madame, then just a teenager, would be tasked with feeding people in hiding at Château Palmer, where she grew up. Her father, Edouard Miailhe, was one of the partners who bought the estate from the founders in the 1930s.
Off she would go on her bicycle with a basket in front packed with produce, sailing right past the Nazi soldiers. They would often stop her and ask things like ‘why do you have so many carrots today’; and she would just laugh them off, essentially risking her life to help feed the Jewish refugees.
Madame is 95-years-old. Perfectly groomed, her eyes are full of wit and kindness.
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