A bloody good red for a darn good steak

Neil Pendock reckons The Bilton is one to try when your next carnivorous urge strikes

Gourmet gossip insists that Queen Victoria's son, King Edward VII, ate himself to death in Rules, London's oldest restaurant.

Tanya Gold reviewed it in Spectator earlier this month and summed it up as purveying "British Food. Not Crappy Modern British Food with its insincerities and collusions and fears but proper, earthy, beast-like British food. The type of food that would, were it still alive as it came to the table, eat you and then lick its own face, bellowing and snorting like a newspaper editor."

So what to drink with your 100% grass-fed Aberdeen Angus steak cooked bleu? The Bilton 2006 single vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon fits the bill as it tastes like blood: salty and full of iron. Heck, add a "g" and you get South Africa's national snack.

The Bilton is quintessential Helderberg Cabernet with a strong flavour of cherries and cherry tomatoes. Made from grapes harvested from the highest vineyard on the farm, which has since been grubbed up, it is a one-off. As is the wooding regime - the wine was matured in 300l barrels from five different coopers for three years.

So is it over-wooded as some pundits pronounced, without bothering to taste it? No, for as consultant winemaker Giorgio Dalla Cia points out, once a wine has extracted all the tannins it can from the wood, it becomes saturated and racking to another barrel simply adds more spice and complexity. This use of wood can be compared to a chef adding seasoning to a dish.

The Spaniards who make the great icon Vega Sicilia Unico understand this; their Cabernet blend spends at least seven years in oak barrels of different sizes and ages. Not cheap, a bottle will set you back up to R3000 - which is what you'll pay for The Bilton, making it the most expensive wine in SA. But then only 500 bottles were made and they're all numbered.

Bilton winemaker Rudi de Wet says the vineyard was grubbed up because the vines were so old - over 40 years - that yields were down to a financially suicidal 2.3 tons. They were also full of leaf roll virus which paints the Helderberg a gorgeous patchwork of red, vermillion and russet in autumn, but also retards the ripening process. De Wet reports that 2006 was one of the longest vintages ever. That said, there are plans to repeat The Bilton, this time with a Bordeaux-style blend for release in 2016.

Farm owner Mark Bilton has fallen in love with the Seychelles and has a midnight-blue catamaran berthed there. He sailed it there a couple of years ago and the skipper insisted he discard half the wine stocks as Somali pirates were expected. Both engines broke down en route "but thanks to the new moon, the low profile and colour of the boat, we drifted past undetected", he recalls.

Bilton hosts an annual pirate party on the farm, where the easy drinking red is Matt Black, named after a mythical pirate who preyed on galleons rounding the Cape in the days of Simon van der Stel. A blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Petit Verdot and Merlot with a smattering of Mourvèdre and Pinotage, the tasting note claims the Cabernet adds "a succulent meatiness."

So, if R3000 a bottle is too rich for your rare prime rib, the R80 Matt Black is a good match for McDonald's.