This unique vertical collection NFT provides ownership of vintage wines and future releases, to the collector and investor.

Meerlust Estate has been the pride of the Myburgh family since 1756. Having previously visited Bordeaux, Nico Myburgh realised that the terroir was very similar to that of his farm near the Eerste River. In 1978, Giorgio Dalla Cia joined Nico at Meerlust in which was to be a dynamic, fruitful decades-long friendship and partnership between owner-vintner and cellarmaster. The Rubicon Bordeaux-styled red was born in 1980, a real Rubicon moment for the South African fine wine market.

Today in the hands of Hannes Myburgh, Meerlust is committed to ensuring that Rubicon becomes even more distinguished and continues to occupy its rightful place amongst the finest wines in the world. Regarded for its classic styling and long-ageing, the Strauss Rubicon 80-34 NFT includes the first 50 vintages of this icon South African wine in varying quantities to total 288 bottles. Due to adverse weather conditions in some vintages and the producer’s commitment to uphold the highest standards of quality, the following vintages were not produced and are therefore are not part of the collection: 1985, 1990, 2002, 2011, 2019.

Click here to view the NFT list for this lot.

Click here to see the full line-up on our NFT Website

• The wines will continue to be cellared at the Meerlust vintage cellar until maturity (estimated 2028) or withdrawal.
• Each bottle within the NFT is also minted as an NFT on the polygon blockchain. This allows for the withdrawal or trading of single bottles, or the entire NFT at any time. Strauss & Co will coordinate the NFT through to maturity, making sure each vintage is added, as well as ‘burning’ NFTs when stock is withdrawn.
• Insurance to be undertaken by new owner.
• Rubicon is not produced every year. If a vintage is not produced, the NFT will include the next vintage, to total 50 consecutive vintages.
• All Web3 development is undertaken by partner Fanfire. Director Gert-Jan van Rooyen is also the Associate Professor Extraordinary for the Internet of things at Stellenbosch University.
• Payment can be made using any of the methods Strauss & Co accepts (cash, credit card, EFT) or optionally with cryptocurrency.
• Fanfire will facilitate payments made in ETH or BTC.
• Sp(i)eel NPO will receive 1,5% of the hammer price from Strauss proceeds
• Pebbles Project NPO will receive 1,5% of the hammer price from the Producer’s proceeds.

Why NFTs?

Non-fungible tokens are a highly efficient way to package a collection of wines for trading and investment. The digital contract, stored on the polygon blockchain, includes all the provenance, pricing, transaction, sensorial and aging information. This importantly authenticates the bottles within the NFT since all the wines were selected from the estate’s library stocks, corresponding to each bottles’ seal-code. NFT transactions are cheap and fast, and don’t add any marginal energy cost. The NFTs can be traded by the owner on any platform, currently also on Opeansea.

The NFTs include perfect cellaring of the wines until maturity, while the contracts are held in a custodial wallet or sent to a cold wallet such as the Venox Vault