Latest Blog Entries

On the 30th of June 2010, Vrede en Lust’s flagship Bordeaux style red blend, the Boet Erasmus 2007, was awarded the Best South African Red Wine Trophy at the International Wine Challenge (IWC) in London. The IWC is one of the leading wine competitions held internationally, attracting more than 10,000 wines from all over the [...]

There have been a number of blog articles following from a frontpage story by Stafford Thomas in the South African Financial Mail. Neil Pendock was one of the few who made positive comments re the article in his blog. He expanded on his thoughts on wine.co.za today. The article has been on my mind for a [...]

The second De Savoye Day Harvest Festival at Vrede en Lust, exceeded guests' high expectations by all accounts! The weather was perfect, combined with exceptional food platters from Cotage Fromage and off course great wine.

It has been 10 weeks since the first Chardonnay came into the cellar in early February. The maiden Shiraz harvested from our Elgin vineyards were the last grapes through the crusher. Susan and her team have crushed 680 tons of grapes brought in by Etienne and his vineyard team.

Pellenc has been kind enough to use Vrede en Lust as one of its South African test wineries for its exciting new Selectiv Process Winery sorter. When grapes are harvested they come with MOG (matters other than grape) and berries are unsuitable for quality wine production. The term MOG covers a range of things including snails, [...]

In 1688 Jacques de Savoye came to South Africa and was granted Vrede en Lust, which in Dutch means “Peace and Passion”. We would like to invite you to the Vrede en Lust Savoye Day Harvest Festival to celebrate the 2010 harvest and our history spanning over 322 years! For the brave ones, who wish to [...]

Meet the Vrede en Lust Harvest 2010 team! Nearly 7 days into the harvest they have already crushed 83 tons! Ansone Fourie, Susan Erasmus, Natalee Hamilton, Ben Snyman, Baron Willemse, Etienne Buys with some Pinotage destined for Rose tipping into the receiving bin Susan is of course the Vrede en Lust winemaker (South Africa’s women winemaker of [...]

Cathy Marston wrote an interesting article re half bottles on Wine.co.za. She asked me for a few comments which I happily did. It is quite sad that there is so little interest in educating the public more about the benefits of half bottles. I agree with Fiona that PET bottles may be a great option (weight [...]

Etienne and his team was up before sunrise on the 2nd of February to start harvesting the 1st grapes for the Vrede en Lust 2010 harvest. It is our 9th harvest of the modern era at the new winery as well as Susan’s 4th full harvest at Vrede en Lust! Susan and Etienne have gained [...]

We have just uploaded a set of beautiful photo’s taken by the very talented Eddie Wilson onto our Vrede en Lust facebook page. The set is called Vrede en Lust Summer 2009. We can have prints produced for those interested in any of them!