HOT LUNCH | How Abigail Rands is redefining Cap Classique - TimesLIVE

The embodiment of Joburg’s food heritage, Andrea Burgener and Nick Gordon have set up an impromptu table at The Leopard especially for us, which feels like an act of considerable friendship because The Leopard, that beloved Joburg institution of excellent ingredients, irreverence and food that tastes resolutely of itself, is no longer operating as a conventional restaurant but rather as a glorious food emporium.

We are here because Abigail Rands, CEO of Krone, is collaborating with Andrea and Nick on a series of lunches later this year, bringing together compatible philosophies: good wine, good food, good farming and the conviction that the best things begin with what comes out of the earth.

Rands grew up in Franschhoek “when it was still a little town”, left home at 18 and promptly disappeared into the world. Indonesia came first, then London and Italy, where she studied fashion design at Polimoda in Florence before moving into luxury goods and working in branding and marketing at Ferragamo.

It is, in retrospect, an unusually good apprenticeship for running a South African wine estate.

“I think what I really brought back from Italy was this understanding of building a brand with cultural relevance,” she says. “I loved wine, but I also loved art. I thought, how am I going to bring these two passions together?”

She returned to South Africa in 2012 under circumstances that would radically alter the course of her life. Her father had recently bought Twee Jonge Gezellen, home of Krone, at auction, apparently beating his rival bidder by around R200,000.

“He bought it on a wing and a prayer,” she says.

Rands had come home because her father was unwell. Within six months, he was dead. He was 63. She was 27.

Suddenly, the young woman who had been working in Italian luxury was responsible for a historic Tulbagh wine estate.

“We just had to get in and figure it out. We started from scratch. The wheels could have come off a few times.”

Wine farms, she points out, are wonderful repositories for money if your ambition is never to see that money again. There has been a decade of renovation, replanting ageing vineyards and continual reinvestment.

“How do you get a small wine farm?” I ask.

“Start with a big one,” she laughs.

What she inherited from her father was less a blueprint than an instinct. A lawyer who quickly realised he did not want to practise law, he became a wine entrepreneur with a gift for identifying emerging regions, winemakers and ideas. Rands remembers wine labels scattered across the kitchen counter at breakfast, conversations about capsules, typography and bottles, and an education absorbed almost by osmosis.

“He taught me to be bold and not be afraid to make mistakes. Just do it. A real can-do attitude.”

Being a 27-year-old woman stepping into her father’s shoes in an old farming industry required some mettle.

“I needed to really earn respect, and that took me 10 years and making a success of Krone.”

Her Italian years gave her the language with which to turn instinct into identity. Art became embedded in Krone through collaborations, exhibitions and an artist residency. Yet Rands is adamant that all the lovely cultural architecture surrounding the brand remains secondary to what is in the bottle.

“We are very focused on wine. That comes first.”

For her, winemaking itself is design. “You begin with soil, then cultivar, aspect, slope and sun. You decide which parcels belong in which wines. In the cellar, Krone experiments with fermentation vessels and keeps an archive of vintages, releasing some years later as recently disgorged (RD) wines.”

“It’s a total design process,” she says. “You design the vineyard.”

And then nature comes along and redesigns it for you. Climate change is already altering harvest. Krone traditionally begins picking in early January; Rands says this season they expect to start in December.

You suddenly have the perspective of an 80-year-old at 39. It’s fine. It’s all fine

Her response is characteristically philosophical: “You work with nature. You work with what you’re given.”

Krone produces vintage Cap Classique rather than smoothing different years into a consistent non-vintage house style. “We work with what that place and time has given us, and with those nuances. We’re not afraid of them.”

Perhaps that equanimity comes from growing up barefoot on farms, riding horses and being attuned to the seasons. Perhaps some of it arrived more recently. Last year, Rands was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

She underwent surgery and describes an intense year of therapy and recovery. The experience, she says, rearranged her sense of what deserves anxiety.

“You suddenly have the perspective of an 80-year-old at 39. It’s fine. It’s all fine.”

The older she gets, the more everything seems to circle back to family. “Family is everything.”

Her mother studied fine art, archaeology and museum sciences and gave her an eye for objects and history. Her 96-year-old grandmother still lives about a kilometre away and runs her honey business, Champagne Honey, from the same gloriously unruly farm.

The name once provoked a legal challenge from Champagne in France. Her grandmother won. “It’s in the blood.”

Rands now wants Krone to become a globally significant Cap Classique brand. It is already exported to around 18 countries, with strong markets in Scandinavia, Britain, the Netherlands, Japan, the Baltics and elsewhere in Europe.

“I think there is a huge opportunity for us to compete with Champagne,” she says. “I want to see more really good Cap Classique on South African tables instead of Champagne. We don’t want to be Champagne. We want to be Cap Classique.”