The Greek, the boeremeisie & the bubbly

Guess what Nicholas Theodoro Christodoulou did after undergoing radical heart bypass surgery, without which he would have shuffled off this mortal coil in his mid-40s – as had happened with many of the men in his Cypriot family who struggled with high cholesterol.

Retire? Not a chance. Foot on the brake? Rest on his laurels for a while – doctor’s orders? As if. Like the doctors, you clearly do not know Nick the Greek.

In September 1995, this Pretoria engineer – who had ended up in the financial world, then became head of the Development Bank of Southern Africa – had the clarity of vision to realise he no longer had the strength for, or interest in, a large garden. So he decided to plant a vineyard in Hout Bay in the Cape, on the hectare of land – covered in lantana, Port Jackson and grass – that he had bought a year or