Perhaps it only seems so many because most of them support nothing: they were originally intended to be more functional, I believe, but it was realised that the splendid views might get spoilt. The prospect is rather handsome, but more grandly Graeco-Egyptian than one expects in the land of whitewashed gables. More to the point are those vineyards and the wines they produce. I can’t immediately think of any producer – let alone a Stellenbosch one – offering such a large range of good, serious wines at prices that you’d think would have people stampeding past those pillars. At the bottom end, there’s a quartet of R30 wines under the Kleine Rust label – but these are neither here nor there, decent enough competition for other dumbed-down, off-dry stuff on the lower supermarket shelves. Genuine interest begins with the Stellenrust cream-labelled wines, which sell off the farm for between R40 and R50. These are mostly offered simply as single-varietals – the usual suspects, from Chenin and Sauvignon to Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon. All are modest wines in the best sense of that rather unfashionable concept: unshowy, unforced and elegant, mostly properly dry without being lean; with decent alcohol levels and little new oak to occlude the purity of the fruit. The standout for me in this excellent bunch is probably the radiant, just-dry Chenin Blanc 2013 – again, if there’s a better wine for R40, I haven’t noticed it. By the way, if you’re suspecting that such prices speak of particularly bad conditions for Stellenrust’s workers – I think not; this is, I believe, the Cape’s largest Fairtrade-certified farm.Click here to read complete article online...