"Where there is passion, there is no compromise"
  - Owner, Giulio Bertrand

Giulio Bertrand - industrialist, yachtsman and conservationist - is self-effacing. He prefers to talk about his oil rather than himself. But he admits to a love of South Africa, instilled during regular business trips from Italy, which have enticed him to spending nine months of the year in the Cape.

Giulio likes to say that he is retired. His father swapped the textile business for dairy farming at the age of 65. Giulio, following suit, made a different choice, he opted for the product of the olive tree and the vine. Yet when he bought the historic Morgenster Estate, dating back to 1711, he had no plan to produce olive oil or wine.

But when he saw the gentle hills rising behind the gabled homestead, he imagined himself back in Tuscany, "there they were," he explains. "� the same as at home!". Although his aim in coming to South Africa was "to have less responsibility', it was inevitable that the idea of farming in Somerset West would come to the fore.