The death, by fire, of octogenarian artist Ferry Bingham-Coetzee in her St. Martini Gardens flat in Gardens last week, confirms the importance of protecting and conserving art. Ferry, widow of avant garde enfant terrible Christo Coetzee, perished in a fire along with an irreplaceable collection of her own and Christo’s art. The tragedy has something of the demise of Miss Havisham (from Charles Dickens’ masterpiece Great Expectations) about it and is grimly ironic, given that one of Christo’s most memorable acts was to destroy an exhibition of his own work after it was sold, to make the point that an artist never relinquishes control of his oeuvre.

The Rupert museum on the banks of the Eersterivier in Stellenbosch came into being after the redoubtable Huberte Rupert was forced to climb up a ladder with a hosepipe to extinguish the smoldering nests birds had built on the spotlights outside her Stellenbosch home. As daughter Hanneli remembers “for the last couple of years of my mom’s life, she lived without her beloved paintings but was happy they were safe in the Rupert museum.”

Vaughan Johnson and Hanneli Rupert-Koegelenberg

Hanneli and husband Hein Koegelenberg have done an artistic rescue of their own, buying and repatriating the collection of Pierneef paintings owned by the artist’s daughter Marita, who now lives in England. The collection has moved to a purpose built museum on Hanneli’s historic La Motte farm just outside Franschhoek, which was opened, along with the Pierneef à La Motte restaurant, in a blaze of boerekos last night. Along with the awesome art, which extended to chandeliers made from suspended VOC crockery, a new benchmark Mediterranean blend was launched.

Named Hanneli R in honour of a wife by a loving husband, Hein said simply “this is the best wine we know how to make.” A blend of Shiraz, Grenache, Cinsault and Cabernet, it confirms once again the climatic and terroir suitability of Rhône blends in an industry obsessed with inappropriate ones from Bordeaux. It’s the Cinsault that makes it special, delivering truckloads of fresh juicy fruit from Paarl and reminds me of those great wines from our recent past: Rustenberg Dry Red and the amazingly still fresh and fruity Overgaauw 1972 Cinsault the Good Value Guru and I enjoyed with David van Velden on Wednesday night.

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