In due course, the farmers’ investment in TIB shares would prove to be an investment of a lifetime. Several Rembrandt shareholders from the early years became millionaires, some multimillionaires. The wealth of quite a number of other affluent Western Cape families, thus to a large extent also the prosperity of the region itself, rests on the foundation of Rembrandt shares. One farmer at Paarl bought £2 000’s worth of shares for each of his four children. Shortly after the turn of the century each child’s shares were worth R132 million. At the De Doorns gathering, which had saved Rupert’s skin that autumn morning in 1944, a woman bought shares for £500. In 2001 her son told Rupert that his mother’s investment had secured him and his sister a comfortable retirement.
Someone who later regretted not having bought shares was Piet Meiring, the South African head of information Rupert had consulted in Johannesburg about the festival newspaper he published during the Great Trek centenary. Meiring was especially regretful as he and Dr Hendrik Verwoerd were plunged into debt in the war years as a result of two business ventures in which they had been involved as co-directors, a garage and a market agency delivering market produce to housewives. ‘Extravagance and mismanagement led to the failure of the two enterprises, with Dr Verwoerd and I as sureties at the bank, ’ Meiring wrote in his memoirs. They owed R50 000 each to Volkskas and Sasbank. The banks were lenient and wrote off part of the amount, but Meiring had to sell his car and some of his paintings to redeem the debt.3
The affair also left a mark on Verwoerd, who was accommodated by the banks through the mediation of Fritz Steyn. Rupert is convinced that this financial failure led to Verwoerd’s hostility towards capitalism. ‘He was prejudiced against the business sector because of his own negative business experience.’ One of the consequences was that the policy of separate development Verwoerd later wanted to extend as prime minister, failed, among other reasons, because he did not want to allow white capital in the black homelands.
In its first years TIB was spreading its wings, selling shares and acquiring new enterprises. Soon its capital was fully subscribed, paving the way for further share issues and expansion. But the big breakthrough came in March 1945, when TIB − acting as trustee of Union Distillers SA (Pty) Ltd on behalf of a company still to be floated − bought the land, machinery and equipment of an insolvent Stellenbosch company, South African Farm Products Protective Association Limited, for £25 000. The price at that time was quite steep, but it secured seven hectares of prime land on the outskirts of the picturesque university town. On 11 June 1945 Distillers Corporation was registered, the first Afrikaans company to be listed on the Johannesburg stock exchange.
The first board of directors of Distillers was constituted as follows: SA (Sidney) Schonegevel (the company’s first chairman, for twenty years), Anton Rupert (managing director), Dirk Hertzog, CC (Oupa) Kriel, JJ (Jurgens) Schoeman, JF (Freddie) Kirsten, PC du Toit and FS (Fritz) Steyn. In a memorandum in which he reacted to criticism that the board was controlled by the National Party, Dirk Hertzog wrote: ‘There was no NP connection and, what’s more, there were SAP members on the board.’4
Distillers started with a substantial capital of £1 300 000, divided into 2 200 000 ordinary shares of ten shillings each and 200 000 preferential shares of £1 each. The share issue was soon oversubscribed − further evidence of the wine farmers’ confidence in Rupert. From within the industry, however, criticism of the new player with its eight liquor stores ranged from vehement to venomous. The editor of the KWV’s journal Wine and Spirit observed somewhat viciously that he found even the criticism strange, ‘as we know that businesses without prospects of a future are usually left severely alone; left to their own fate.’ He also criticised the leadership of the new company’s use of Afrikaans: ‘Why they should continually refer to the Afrikaans origin of the company, they alone know.’
For Rupert there was a good reason to use Afrikaans in addition to English. True to his roots and imbued with the desire to prove that Afrikaners could succeed in industry, he has never been ashamed or hesitant to fly the flag for Afrikaans. He also had another motive: to champion the predominantly Afrikaans wine farmers’ right to proper recognition. And he wanted to promote estate wines, a dream that would occupy him for most of his life and that would also lead to the Ruperts’ involvement in estates that produce quality wines.
In the initial years there was not much he could offer the wine farmers, who were naturally aggrieved by their marginalised position in the industry. As one of them put it, the wine trade was in the hands of ‘whisky drinkers who stood wine bottles upright on liquor store shelves’.
Rupert’s conviction that such people had no respect for wine was a major reason why he started promoting estate wines, and why he wanted the wine farmers to receive the honour due to them. His first estate wines were from the farms Montpellier, Theuniskraal and Alto. He also introduced the French and German custom of appellation contrôlée in South Africa, that is, labelling wines as products of a specific estate and its vineyards.
‘It was an interesting marketing strategy,’ he says. ‘It drew the farmers into the industry and put their names on the map.’ By 1946 about twenty wine farmers had joined the umbrella organisation for estate wines that became known as the Bergkelder (Mountain Cellar). Among the best known of these pioneers were Andries Jordaan of Theuniskraal, Tulbagh; De Wet Theron of Montpellier, Tulbagh; Manie Malan of Alto, Stellenbosch; Baron von Carlowitz of Uitkyk, Muldersvlei; Danie Roux of Provence, Franschhoek; P Bruwer of Mont Blois, Robertson; and P Beyers of Riversmeet, Groot Drakenstein. It was not until 1972, however, that estate wines gained general recognition and legal protection in South Africa.
Another astute move of Rupert’s was to push up the shelf prices of good estate wines. When Paul Sauer, later a cabinet minister and owner of a top Stellenbosch wine farm, Kanonkop, chided Rupert for this, his response was: ‘Look at the wines people order when they entertain. They buy foreign wines because they’re more expensive. They don’t want to appear mean by offering their guests cheaper wine.’
Distillers started under very difficult circumstances. The immediate post-war period was a time of scarcity, with both money and goods hard to come by. Building materials were sold under a government-imposed quota system.
Rupert’s new company had to make do with old buildings left by the bankrupt company. The only proper structure comprised a large room and four small partitioned offices. Three of these were occupied by Rupert, his secretary J van R Maartens and Daan Hoogenhout; the fourth accommodated a few clerks, including Fanie Botha, later minister of labour. Rupert managed to secure a permit to purchase building materials to the value of £5 000, which had to be used to build essential facilities like tanks and a laboratory. Undercover working accommodation was a secondary consideration and a luxury cellar unthinkable. Open-sided sheds were constructed to provide some shelter. They were walled in gradually as bricks became available.
An early setback was the rationing of rebate brandy by the KWV, which had instituted quotas for proof spirit for the liquor industry based on past purchases. So although Distillers had initially envisaged 40 000 gallons a year, on account of rationing it was allocated only 9 000 gallons based on its takeover of the much smaller Forrer Brothers. For all its healthy capital investment and processing facilities Distillers was ‘all dressed up and nowhere to go’, as Dirk Hertzog put it in an internal memorandum. ‘It took sweat and toil to do business successfully despite these constraints imposed by the state.’5
Distillers had to relinquish some 80% of its allocated quota of proof spirit to the older, more established companies like Castle Wine and Brandy. The wheel came full circle in 1969, however, when the Oude Meester Group, an offshoot of Distillers, took over this giant company.
Rupert’s obsession with quality made up for constraints with regard to supplies and infrastructure. From the outset Distillers concentrated on producing quality brandies, of which Oude Meester was but one. In 1949 Distillers outranked all other South African companies at the Empire Wine Exhibition in London. This feat was repeated in 1950, the year in which Oude