My year of wine: Gleaming machinery puts paid to old-world charm

The day I visited Rustenberg Wines in Stellenbosch, not only did I taste wines with the lovely Erich, I was also taken on an extensive tour of the wine-making process.

I was lucky as the wine-making operation was going full steam. Crates of grapes had been trucked to the winery, the machines ready.

There are three buildings close to the office and tasting blocks on the biggest single wine property in the Cape winelands. Although this 12000ha of vineyards doesn't produce the most wine, it knocks out just under 1million bottles produced from 1100 tons of grapes every year.

What strikes me immediately when Murray Barlow, the young, multi-award-winning wine-maker, takes me through the process is how state-of-the-art technology and ancient methods combine to make us drunk.

The grapes are first sent through a large steel shredder, where they are destalked. The stalks are sent to the compost heap and the grapes are piped into the first shed.

It is a renovated dairy and from outside its heritage has been carefully maintained. But inside it has been transformed into a sophisticated factory. There are large steel barrels that range from 1000 to 30 000 litres capacity in the double-volume space. Some rest on the ground, others are supported on a criss-crossing of metal beams. Nothing hangs or is attached to the walls.

I had washed my feet carefully that morning, but sadly there was no crushing the grapes by foot.

Instead, the grapes are crushed in a gleaming machine. The liquid that runs from this smells of freshly cut grass. From here the liquid is deposited into the large steel barrels or piped into another building.

Barlow takes me down a few steps and leads me along an underground passage. I think immediately of Nkandla's secret tunnels. "We can maintain the pipes easily in this tunnel," he says.

The cellar is cool and smells nicely of wine. I see, too, the expensive European bottling and labelling machinery, not in use that day.

I am struck generally by how few people are needed to operate the machines and how streamlined operations are. And, I am very sorry my feet don't get soiled.