I have very good news for Joburgers who are still not over the closure of The Leopard restaurant. Which is quite a lot of us, and all these years later nogal. When I posted images on Instagram earlier this week of the warm-up dinner I’d attended ahead of the events about to be detailed, I received more direct messages than I have in ages.
So here’s the reveal for the throngs who asked. For a few days in November, Andrea Burgener and Nick Gordon will leave their Leopard deli in Greenside and return to the restaurant business. They are teaming up with Krone for a series of pop-up lunches at Glenshiel, the grand old Herbert Baker and Frank Fleming gal in Westcliff. Tickets go on sale through Quicket on September 28 and, as the epicurean gods have decreed, will not hang around for long.
A meeting of minds and magic
Krone and The Leopard may come from different ends of the N1, but they belong to the same gang. Both are owner-run and interested in the good stuff: provenance, ingredients, craft, curiosity and care. Neither mistakes a vast decorating budget or influencers snapping gratuitous images for personality or substance. Slash the flash: it’s all about what is on the plate and in the glass.
Krone is made at Twee Jonge Gezellen, the historic Tulbagh farm where cap classique has been produced for more than half a century. The team knows that wine does not exist in isolation. Food, art, design, landscape and the people around the table are all part of the pleasure.
“Food and wine have always been very naturally connected for us at Krone,” says Abigail Rands, marketing head and part of the family who own the brand. “The idea behind Chefs in Residence was to bring people we admire into our world and give them the freedom to respond to Krone in their own way.”
Its inaugural Chefs in Residence programme last year made that philosophy literal. Margot Henderson of London’s Rochelle Canteen and Paris-based chef Rose Chalalai Singh cooked long-table lunches on the farm, joined by Fergus and Hector Henderson of St John. The food was generous, ingredient-led and free of foams and fripperies: Thai sausages with mint and coriander, open-fire quail, bone marrow with parsley salad, sea bass, Welsh rarebit and madeleines.
The St John connection had locals in a flap. Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver’s restaurant has spent more than 30 years making nose-to-tail eating famous, treating the unfashionable bits of an animal with intelligence and respect. It is one of my London happy places — a place for real food people, really.
For its second residency, Krone wanted to take the idea beyond Tulbagh. Joburg, Rands says, has a culturally rich, curious and social energy, along with a formidable food, art and creative community. She also believes that there is something rather pleasing about carrying a wine so rooted in Tulbagh into the middle of Joburg.
The Leopard is not dissimilar in ethos to Krone but is very much its own Jozi iteration. Burgener and Gordon have fed Joburg since opening Superbonbon in 1999, followed by Deluxe and The Leopard. The latter became a Joburg institution, and when the couple closed it in 2017 and reinvented it as The Leopard Food Company, the city gained excellent ready meals and my regular lunch heaven, the pata wrap (thank heavens their deli is next door to our office). That said, we lost the full Leopard dinner, and specifically the “little cough quail”, which is longed for across the City of Gold with an intensity that is probably not healthy.
Rands sees the kinship. “There’s a generosity and lack of pretension to what Andrea and Nick do, but at the same time an enormous amount of knowledge and integrity behind it,” she says. “That combination feels very aligned with how we think about Krone.”
Understandably then, the Leopard is not going to squeeze itself into a predetermined brand exercise. Instead, Burgener and Gordon have been given room to interpret the wines through their own cooking and distinctive sensibility. So now we’re getting a delicious temporary resurrection of the OG but for 2026.
A glass and a half
The surprise, for me, was how much the pairing at our recent dinner changed the way I understood the wines, though admittedly I am something of a cap classique novice.
As we ate, the distinct wines took shape and shone. One was bright with citrus; another had a savoury, mineral character that made the sandstone beneath the vines that shaped it almost palpable. The Night Nectar, a sweeter style I had assumed would not be for me, was a revelation beside a taro-leaf snack with a serious punch of spice.
That is the pleasure of a good pairing. It is educational, but nobody makes you feel as though you are at school — or a fool for not already knowing your stuff.
Local fizz, serious pedigree
Krone has some timely evidence for its claim to the top table. In Tim Atkin MW’s 2026 South Africa Special Report, released this week, the Krone R.D. CC 2016 received 94 points. The late-release Blanc de Blancs, made from chardonnay grown in Elandskloof and matured for a decade on its lees, was praised for its concentration, savoury character and lingering, bone-dry finish.
It is also Rands’s own desert-island pick. The 2016 vintage was a challenging one for the farm, she says, and the wine carries that history: “It holds that tension between opposing forces; like a time capsule, it holds memory for me.”
The score goes part of the way to explain the reaction of a friend when I mentioned the dinner. “I can’t believe Krone is South African. I thought it was an international Champagne,” they said.
International-level fizz, matching food and a few hours about them both. Ambrosia.
The Krone x Leopard lunches take place at Glenshiel in Westcliff during November. Tickets will be available through Quicket from September 28. Dates, menu, price and booking link to come.
