Entering the winemaking business is not for the faint of heart. Doing so with no prior experience, on the edge of a desert where temperatures hit 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), might be considered foolhardy. But for Rudie van Vuuren, the gamble paid off.
Van Vuuren is the managing director of Neuras Wine and Wildlife Estate, 140 miles south of Windhoek, Namibia. Situated in the foothills of the Naukluft Mountains, on the fringe of the Namib Desert, the boutique operation is, according to its owners, the driest vineyard outside of the Atacama Desert in Chile. Wrangling a hostile climate as well as hungry baboons, Neuras has plotted a journey from amateur enthusiasm to award-winning winemaking, putting this remote corner of Africa on the grape-growing map.
In recent years, the tiny vineyard has won international medals, including golds and double golds, for its red wine, ruby dessert wine and “nappa” (a spirit similar to grappa).
The winery manager says that none of this would have happened without the unlikely help of a leopard called Lightning.
Van Vuuren had lived multiple lives before pursuing winemaking. A medical doctor who was also a member of the Namibian national cricket and rugby teams – and who played at World Cups in both sports – he became a conservationist.
In 2009, Van Vuuren was in a helicopter, tracking a leopard, Lightning, which had been rescued then released into the wild. Suddenly below him appeared a desert oasis. The land, he learned, belonged to a retired Shell executive who had nurtured vines on a small area of his 14,500-hectare tract. Van Vuuren descended to inform him there was a big cat on his property and fell in love with the vineyard – and its wine.
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