Back in the day when South Africans were glued to their radio sets listening to the first landing on the moon, when going to the movies was the entire evening’s entertainment and if you were anything from 10 to 25 you yearned to share in the nirvana of Woodstock, Carnaby Street and bell bottoms, Günter Brözel was setting the issues of the world aside to coax South Africa’s very first noble late harvest wine into being.

The German-born and raised cellarmaster of Nederburg, who was familiar with the richly scented, honeyed, complex and exquisitely graceful noble late harvest Trockenbeerenauslese wines of his native country, as well as the Tokaj wines of Hungary and the Sauternes of France, wanted to create something similar on South African soil.

Working very closely with Dr Nino Costa of Monis, who had trained as a chemist, local vineyards were identified and after extensive experimentation, the first wine made from grapes infected with the fungus, noble rot (Botrytis cinerea) was produced in 1969.

Noble rot grows in moist, humid conditions, often brought on by summer rains, followed by moderate temperatures and enough of a breeze to ensure good air circulation through the vine canopies. The fungus literally feeds on the juice of the grapes and concentrates not only their sugars, but their acids and flavours. One of nature’s miracles, it depends on a pretty exact sequence of events – a few days, at most, of wet weather and then sunshine – to produce wines of luxurious depth and sweetness. Wet weather, followed by extended cold temperatures and high humidity or too hot weather, can turn the noble into sour rot, rendering the grapes worthless and totally unusable for any wine at all.

It had taken the pair years to get to the point where the grapes were of the quality to make the wine that Brözel envisaged and the 1969 vintage was especially kind to them. Not one to mince his words, he pronounced it “perfect”. At a more expansive moment, he described as a “late-late harvest liquid gold” wine that was “fruity with a taste of almond.”

That was the good news. The not so good news was that in the legislative landscape of the time, the residual sugar content of natural wines could not exceed 30 grams per litre. His new wine, that he called Edelkeur, after the German word for noble rot which is edelfäule, came in way, way above that. But he wasn’t going to let such constraints stand in his path. It took extensive lobbying and the co-operation of Nietvoorbij’s Oenological and Viticultural Research Institute, as it was called in those days, for Act No 25 of 1957 to be amended, permitting Nederburg to sell “not more than 2 000 gallons” of the 1969 vintage.

And so it was then that the Nederburg Auction was established, as a platform for this new and unusual wine. First held in 1975, it has remained a showcase for Edelkeur, as well as the many other specialty South African wines.

Although the legislation has since been changed to allow for the unrestricted sale of noble late harvest wines, Edelkeur is still made for sale exclusively on this auction.

Since taking over as cellarmaster of Nederburg in 2001, Razvan Macici has shown great dexterity in making noble late harvest wines of his own, augmenting the award-winning tradition created by Brözel. “When Romanians hear the name Macici, they immediately think of my late father. His named was closely linked with noble late harvest wines. Botrytis wines were the first I learned to understand and that I aspired to make.”

Standing out for their luxuriously sweet yet graceful aromas and tastes, tempered by a firm acidity, today’s Edelkeurs continue to honour the tradition established by Brözel when the Stones’ Honky Tonky Woman was hitting the charts.

This year’s auction features the seminal 1977 vintage, made by Brözel and voted one of the top 10 wines on an international sweet wine competition held in Budapest in 2007, as well as the highly decorated 1998, 2004 and 2005 vintages. Also scheduled to come under the hammer is the single-vineyard 2001 S16 Weisser Riesling Noble Late Harvest.