Not every successful wine estate in South Africa runs a profile to rival Paris Hilton. Some proprietors are (amazingly) a little publicity-shy. Others would love the attention, but haven't worked out what has to be done to acquire territorial rights on the radar screens of the nation's wine drinkers.

There is of course a risk that invisibility becomes self-perpetuating. Muratie's Rijk Melck once sent me a note - more in sorrow than in anger - after I had written about several of the better Simonsberg estates and omitted to mention his family property. It certainly justified a place on that list. Why hadn't I even thought about it? Probably because, like its wines and its proprietor, it is one of the least showy places in that stretch of Stellenbosch.

Is it doomed to be the wall-flower at the Simonsberg party. That depends on the view that you take of the charms of the extrovert life. Just because it doesn't give you the most outrageous come-hither doesn't mean it isn't worth a visit, or that its wines don't warrant a sampling.

In the era of the late Annemarie Canitz and her tea-drinking winemaker Ben Prins, its wines were 'interesting' - a euphemism for 'you were never quite sure what the contents of a bottle were like until you opened it.' Then Ronnie Melck - at the time CEO of Stellenbosch Farmers Winery - bought the estate. He had lived there as a student and had long harboured a dream of returning there to farm on the property.

Melck had a legendary palate, and he knew about Muratie's potential. He didn't have the resources to transform it overnight, nor did he have that many years left to him to see the vision become a reality. His family however has embraced it (his son Rijk used to be the local GP in Stellenbosch - now he's a full time wine smous).

I imagine that the Ronnie would be pretty pleased with the wines emerging from the cellar these days. The shiraz is unshowy (not surprising given the farm, but also the style of wine that most appealed to him). It does have a savoury, almost leathery note in addition to the quite plush red fruit layering the spice. The flagship red is called Ansela van der Caab - after the freed slave who became the property's First Lady. The latest release, the 2007, is a Bordeaux blend with 8% shiraz added for spice rather than sweetness. It has fine, but not over-polished, textures and a quite classical elegance and freshness.

The Muratie Isabella 2008 Chardonnay is the white wine equivalent: restrained not overblown, with the oak used to enhance development, rather than to flavour the finished product. The cellar still produces fortified wines, including a drier-than-customary Cape Ruby [Port] and a slightly modernised version of the Amber - of which Melck probably consumed copious quantities when he was a student living at the farm.

Of course, Muratie is not the only historic wine farm with a profile low enough to start an underground movement. Oude Nektar used to be like that until Hans-Peter Schroder bought it and turned it into the home base for Neil Ellis Wines and the fruit source for his son-in-law's Starke-Conde range.

In that same section of the Jonkershoek there are other low-key operations yielding wines of indisputable quality. Etienne Le Riche's Cabernets are consistently amongst the Cape's best (and their selling prices reflect this level of consumer approval - since they are marketed entirely without hype). Klein Gustrouw, almost unknown to everyone except its mail order customers, (and probably destined for vinous oblivion now that the McDonalds have moved on), was another.

And that in turn had me thinking about Natte Vallei - which in the 1970s made some of the country's best Cabernets - and its near neighbour Lievland. This was once a pioneering 'new generation' Shiraz cellar. Now it is little more than a sign post on the R44 between Stellenbosch and Klapmuts.