During this busy time, the indefatigable Beyers Truter was also running the Pinotage Association, which he had been instrumental in forming in 1995 (and of which he remains the helmsman and guiding force).
The association has driven everything from dedicated viticultural and oenological research and experimentation to innovative marketing ventures: the ABSA Pinotage Top 10 Competition; the new South Africa's Pinotage Wine Guide; and the planned ABSA Cape Blend Trophy Challenge (for which entries are required to contain a minimum of 30 per cent pinotage).
After the frenetic period in which he was also managing three wine properties and two wineries, Beyers Truter decided in 2004 that he was ready to 'come home' to Beyerskloof. The 2003 vintage had seen him hospitalised mid-harvest with a congenital lung ailment (from which he fully recovered).
'Those wines were made by the grace of God and thanks to Abrie.' The two are great friends: fellow pinotage devotees, avid rugby supporters, and Christian worshippers at the same Stellenbosch church.
Memorabilia - framed photographs and rugby jerseys, newspaper clippings and campaign posters - from those eventful first two-and-half decades are treasured in a cosy anteroom to his underground vinothèque beneath the trendy visitor's centre adjoining the cellar on Beyerskloof.
It's the handiwork of creative wife Esmé, whom he married shortly after graduation and also credits as a bookkeeper, marketer, tasting-room manager and export facilitator in the early years of Beyerskloof. Her more recent project has been the transformation of their seaside cottage.
'Tourism, including wine tourism, is a big part of the future of this country. '
Beyers Truter gave son Arni, an Elsenburg Agricultural College winemaking graduate, the reins in 2007. Together father and son, cellarmaster and winemaker, continue to explore pinotage in all its possible guises.
The relatively new flagships from top-performing mature vineyards and barrel selections are the Diesel Pinotage and Faith. The Diesel name and label are in memory of Beyers’ beloved boerboel/Great Dane cross: 'A real wine dog: he was the result of Le Bonheur' Sakkie Kotze's boerboel getting through the fence to reach Norma Ratcliffe's Great Dane at Warwick!' The Faith Cape blend commemorates 'my faith in God, country and pinotage (as well as his FAITH fund for education about and treatment of foetal alcohol syndrome).
Then there's a Pinotage Reserve; a Pinotage Rosé; a Pinotage Rosé Brut charmat-method bubbly; a port combining pinotage with classic port variety touriga naçional: and a white blend combining pinotage with chenin blanc. Pinotage is also a player in the Synergy Cape Blend. The only wine the variety doesn't feature in, is the Field Blend (from a single small vineyard of inter-planted cabernet and merlot harvested and vinified together).
Beyers' championing of pinotage extends to encouraging chefs at the farm's Red Leaf Restaurant - and trying himself - to use pinotage as the wine ingredient of choice in a dish wherever possible: a pinotage jus with a springbok or ostrich fillet or rib-eye steak; a pinotage onion confit on a gourmet burger; eggs poached in pinotage or with a pinotage sauce (a Cape version of Burgundian oeufs en meurette or de Bourguignon); a pinotage ice cream or gelato.
That's only when this active hunter, fisherman and diver isn't preparing something from the sea at the family's holiday home in Vermont, a popular diving spot near Hermanus: kreef [crayfish], alikreukel [giant periwinkle], braais and potjies. The area in front of Beyers Truter house is a mass of periwinkle shells. 'It's my alikreukel garden.' And the house is called Pinotage!
Perlemoen [abalone] used to be a favourite before uncontrolled large-scale poaching resulted in depleted wild stocks and a ban on seasonal diving by recreational permit holders. Perhaps it's yet another seemingly lost but worthwhile cause this vintner of inexhaustible energy, drive and faith might take up some time.
Beyers Truter minced alikreukel (giant periwinkles) in pinotage with Frank’s saffron rice recipe paired with Beyerskloof Pinotage....
Rib-eye steak with pinotage sauce and mieliebrood (cornbread) recipe by Beyers Truter....