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 Meester was named the best brandy produced in the British Commonwealth. Rupert had personally designed the famous Oude Meester trademark for Distillers. Later he also proposed the name Amarula for the cream liqueur that became a worldwide favourite.
Huberte Rupert often visited the cellar and showed visitors around. At that stage there was no glass factory in the Cape that produced bottles, so they had to avail themselves of used ones. Bottle cleaning was a major operation, conducted just outside the laboratory. It was not a prepossessing spectacle for visitors. So Milton, the gatekeeper, would give a few shrill blasts on a whistle whenever Huberte and her visitors arrived. This was the sign for the bottle-washers to vanish into the cellar, leaving access to the laboratory unobstructed.
Within the company Distillers’ personnel relations attested to Rupert’s personal values. Despite the growing number of employees, he kept his ear close to the ground and shared their well and woe, in a sense honouring the ethos of earlier, more intimate family businesses. Huberte was very much involved in this aspect of her husband’s career.
Soon after he became Distillers’ wine technologist in 1946 Alfred Baumgartner, a German who hailed from Swakopmund in present-day Namibia, was under threat of deportation to Germany as a hostile alien. Awaiting the dreaded deportation order, he and his wife had already sold most of their possessions and kept only their beds and five suitcases. Huberte, deeply moved by their plight, offered to look after their three children and return them to their parents once they had found their feet in war-ravaged Germany. But eventually Baumgartner, father of the Stellenbosch artist Regine Kröger, was not deported and in 1948, when the Malan government took over, the family was granted permanent residence. But the Ruperts’ generous offer earned their lasting gratitude
