1963 was a memorable year. It marked the start of a turbulent decade in geopolitics which ended with the 1973 oil crisis. It was the year which would be remembered for the assassination of JFK and the escalation of the Vietnam War. The civil rights movement gained unstoppable momentum with Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech, which ultimately gave it mainstream appeal.
The Profumo scandal brought down the Tory government in the UK and the Beatles held their first major concert at the London Palladium, which signaled the start of the “Beatlemania”. On the African Continent it was the year of Kenyan independence and birth of the Organisation of African Unity.
In South Africa the Rivonia Trial started in October of that year, after the arrest of a number of leaders of the Anti-Apartheid struggle, including Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. A month earlier, a major and tragic air crash killed 13 members of the SAAF, when the Shackleton naval reconnaissance aircraft crashed in the Stettynsberg mountains. In the shadow of the mountains the wine growers of the valley just laid the foundations of Stettyn Cellar.
Today more than a half a century later the cellar, its vineyards and wines have grown and developed in scale, quality, and complexity whilst all that remains of the ill-fated Shackleton are its Rolls Royce Griffin engines slowly decaying as time passes in a remote mountain gorge.