Neil Pendock: Artificial intelligence may be the next big thing in farming, good news for a winery with an appropriate name

The recent achievement of Dr Craig Venter, who made artificial life from some bits of sticky paper and a piece of string, is good news for wine lovers. For, rather than having to put up with overpaid prima donna winemakers who demand outrageous full-time salaries to work three weeks a year, farm owners may soon be able to "employ" nano robots - nabots, if you like - who will whizz around fermenting tanks of grape must, herding yeasts like sheepdogs. Inappropriate odours and flavours will be hunted down mercilessly and excessively alcoholic molecules will be ejected faster than a BBC reporter from an ANC Youth League meeting.

Hanneli Rupert-Koegelenberg, châtelaine of Franschhoek estate La Motte, quickly realised that, while the village (dubbed a sunny place for shady people by readers of Somerset Maugham) is a great place to drink wine, when it comes to growing grapes, you can do better - such as Bot River, that drive-through hamlet at the foot of the descent from Elgin to Hawston to buy poached perlemoen. Bot River is already producing some of the best barrel-fermented chenin blanc in the shape of Sebastian Beaumont's Hope Marguerite and it is now making waves with a stellar sauvignon blanc.

HRK's farm Nabot may be so called as it's close to Bot River, but at the dawn of the nano robots, it is fortuitously named indeed. Franschhoek bonus points are awarded, as "nabot" is also French for "footling" or "runt" - unfortunate, perhaps, but nice to have in a village that celebrates Bastille Day with more verve than Versailles, and where locals can wear black berets while shopping at Spar on a Saturday morning, without being laughed at.

Another plus is that Nabot grapes are farmed organically - much to the disappointment of multinational pesticide companies. La Motte has just released a 2009 vintage sauvignon blanc made from Nabot grapes and what a taste of the future it is. HRK's brother, Johann Rupert, will approve as it's not necessary to down a Rennie to counter the excess acidity found in some SA sauvignons. The opposite, actually, as the wine has a hint of creaminess you find in the best examples from Sancerre. The flavours are suitably tropical: spanspek and honey melon with a green twist.

But the final triumph is the dedication to Henk Pierneef, that great state artist of the old SA, whose 32 panels at Park Station in Johannesburg would be civic masterpieces to mock the rubbish the city now erects, if they were still there. They're not, having been saved by the Rupert family and shipped to Graaff-Reinet, Rupert HQ.

So what if Pierneef is famous for Highveld landscapes and another Dutchman, Jan Volschenk, would have been more appropriate for a Nabot wine?

This one is splendidly politically incorrect and the Pierneef image on the back label is certainly appropriate: "die eensame" (the lonely), referring to a single tree on the veld or a brave attempt at a quality organic wine, in a town too frivolously French for its own good.