ABINGDON SOARS: The Smorthwaites of the KZN Midlands – triumphant in food and wine

/ – she cannot now remember. After all, it has some years ago that she graduated from dance classes with teacher Eileen Keegan in Kloof, where she also went to primary and high school, joined Napac, and then took a soaring leap to dance and tour internationally with the London Festival Ballet.

Deciding against the next proposed posting, Syria, they headed to Joburg, where a chance meeting with a friend of Sol Kerzner launched their next venture. Sol called Jane his “I can do it girl”. Whatever décor and furnishing items he dreamed up for his next fantastic hotel, the Smorthwaites would find, in Java, Thailand, Bali, wherever – their Asian contacts were invaluable.

When a table of regulars from Maritzburg called Jane over to tell her: “We’ve been coming here for 10 years and you’ve never ever disappointed us,” Steve Seinfeld at the next table must surely have overheard. And seen. “Nothing goes back, these days!” Go easy on the gushing about this Nebbiolo, I tell myself. But it’s a difficult feat, and especially in these high, often cold Midlands, way off the well-trodden viticultural and climate map, a defiant middle-finger to winemaking the easy way.

We’ve been nursing the Nebbiolo in the glass for a while. I’ve nosed the wine casually. He has elbows planted emphatically on his own crafted bar counter, fixing me with an interrogatory gaze. The wine’s less tight now, the puckery tannins waning a tad, to use a wine term. And still waiting.

And then he tells me something, and I wonder if this engaging, plausible, civilised, clever, risk-taking, artisanal subversive, who ticks every box, really has both paddles in the water.

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