Rustenberg Malbec
£12.89
£17.19 per litre · incl. 20% VAT
Only 1 bottle left
90Tim Atkin MW
Silver Medal
Malbec, but make it Stellenbosch. Rustenberg coaxes this Argentine-famous grape into something distinctly Cape, bright purple in the glass, pouring plum, blackberry and violets with a twist of pepper and pipe tobacco. Polished, structured, and seriously easy to drink. A clever pick for anyone who thinks they've got Malbec figured out.
Not for sale to persons under 18. Adult signature required on delivery.
Our Verdict
We listed this because Stellenbosch Malbec is one of the Cape's quietest success stories, and Rustenberg's version is the one we keep reaching for. There's a poise here you don't always get with Malbec, the fruit is generous, the structure is precise, and the oak knows its place. With 90 points from Tim Atkin MW and a Silver at the IWC behind it, it punches well above its price. Perfect for the curious drinker who already knows their Argentine Malbecs and wants to see where else the grape can go. Decant it for an hour and pour it with lamb.
Tasting Notes
Pour this and the glass fills with deep purple, a colour that signals what's coming. The nose leads with ripe plum and blackberry, threaded with violets and a curl of pipe tobacco. On the palate, dark fruit takes centre stage, but it's the structure that holds your attention: fine-grained tannins, a savoury edge of cracked black pepper, and a gentle cedar warmth from time in French oak. The finish lingers long and dry, leaving a memory of dark berries and woodsmoke.
Dark Plum & Blackberry
Ripe, brooding orchard and hedgerow fruit sits at the core, sweet enough to seduce, dark enough to stay serious through the long finish.
Violet Perfume
A floral lift cuts through the weight, giving the nose a perfumed elegance that's classic Malbec, pretty, fragrant, instantly recognisable.
Pepper & Tobacco
Cracked black pepper meets a savoury whisper of pipe tobacco, adding the kind of grown-up complexity that lifts this above easy weeknight reds.
About This Wine
Most people meet Malbec in Mendoza and stop there. Rustenberg makes a strong case for looking further south, to the granite slopes of the Simonsberg, where this Bordeaux native has quietly found one of its happiest homes outside France. The result is a Malbec with proper Stellenbosch personality: generous fruit, but cooler, tighter, more savoury than its Argentine cousins.
Expect deep purple in the glass and a nose that opens with plum, blackberry and crushed violets, threaded with black pepper and a whisper of pipe tobacco. The palate is smooth and confidently structured, with fine-grained tannins and the kind of gentle oak influence that frames the fruit without smothering it. Fifteen months in French 225-litre barrels, only ten percent of them new, adds a quiet cedary lift rather than a vanilla blast.
This is a wine that loves the dinner table. Pour it with slow-roasted lamb shoulder, rosemary and garlic doing their thing; or a properly braised beef short rib; or a mushroom risotto rich with porcini. It's also a brilliant braai bottle, rump steak, sosaties, a coil of spiced boerewors on the coals.
Rustenberg has been making wine on the Simonsberg since 1682, which gives them a few hundred years' head start on most of the competition. Delivered across the UK, and a thoughtful gift for the Malbec lover in your life who's ready to be surprised.
Food Pairing
This is built for slow Sunday cooking. Think rosemary-and-garlic-studded leg of lamb pulled from the oven, beef short ribs braised until they fall off the bone, or a deep porcini risotto stirred with patience. It handles the smoke of a charcoal grill brilliantly too, sosaties, rump steak, or a thick boerewors coil cooked over the coals.
- —Slow-roasted leg of lamb with rosemary and garlic
- —Braised beef short ribs with red wine and thyme
- —Porcini and wild mushroom risotto
- —Grilled rump steak with peppercorn sauce
- —Aged pecorino with fig and walnut
How to Serve
Temperature
Cool room temperature. If it's been on the rack, leave it for twenty minutes; if it's been in the fridge, give it an hour.
Decanting
Worth decanting. Give it an hour in a wide-bottomed decanter, the tannins soften, the violet aromatics open up, and that savoury pepper-and-tobacco layer steps forward properly.
Glass
A large-bowled Bordeaux glass gives the perfumed nose room to breathe and directs the fruit cleanly onto the palate.
Cellaring
Store on its side somewhere cool, dark and steady, ideally 12-14°C with stable humidity. Avoid the kitchen and any spot that swings with the seasons.
Ageing & Cellaring
Drinking beautifully now, but there's clearly more to come. The combination of fine-grained tannin, fresh acidity and gentle oak suggests another six to eight years of graceful evolution, with the dark fruit slowly giving way to more savoury notes of cedar, leather and tobacco.
The Land
The vineyards climb the red, decomposed-granite slopes of the Simonsberg and Helderberg. That mix of slopes and aspects lets the team match each variety to its sweet spot, cooler facings here, warmer there, so the fruit arrives in the cellar already expressing what it should. Iron-rich soils give the wines their savoury edge and quiet grip.
The Winemaking
Hand-picked fruit arrives at the cellar, where it's crushed, de-stemmed and sent to stainless steel for fermentation. Regular pump-overs and an extended maceration of up to seven days draw out colour and structure without pushing into harshness. The wine then settles into 225-litre French oak barrels, around 10% new, the rest second, third and fourth fill, for 15 months. That gentle oak regime is the key: enough wood to lend cedar and spice, never so much that it muscles in over the plum and violet fruit.
About the Producer
Rustenberg
Some estates chase trends; Rustenberg has simply kept doing what it does best since 1682. Tucked into the valley beneath the Simonsberg mountain in Stellenbosch, this is one of the oldest continuously farmed wine properties in South Africa, and you can taste that history in every bottle. The vineyards sit on cool, well-drained slopes that have been proving their worth for over three centuries, long before anyone had coined the term 'terroir'.
What makes Rustenberg worth your attention today isn't just the age of the place, it's who's running it. The Barlow family bought Rustenberg in 1941 and have owned it ever since, the longest single-family tenure in the farm's long history. Simon Barlow began modernising the estate from 1987, bringing rigour and ambition to a property that had all the raw ingredients but needed someone to sharpen the focus. His son Murray, twice named Diner's Club Young Winemaker of the Year before joining the family business in 2012, represents the next chapter: someone who grew up around these vines and has since brought fresh technical precision to them.
That combination, deep-rooted history paired with a genuinely modern approach, is what defines Rustenberg's wines. They're structured and built to age, the kind of bottles that reward patience rather than instant gratification. The estate has built its reputation on Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, alongside Bordeaux-style blends that show real seriousness of intent, and increasingly on varietal wines like Malbec that let a single grape speak clearly about where it's grown.
We stock Rustenberg because it represents Stellenbosch doing what it does best: taking a genuinely historic site and refusing to let that history become a museum piece. Every wine carries the Wine of Origin Stellenbosch seal, but more than that, it carries the confidence of a producer who knows exactly what their slopes are capable of. For UK drinkers exploring South African wine beyond the obvious names, Rustenberg offers something rare: a direct line back to the earliest days of Cape winemaking, made relevant by people still asking how to do it better.