A good excuse for making wine

The legacy of Groot Constantia has its roots in one man who needed to have a very good excuse to make wine. His mandate was to start a permanent replenishment station at the Cape, supplying fruit, vegetables and meat to passing ships en route to the Far East – all this under the orders of the Dutch East India Company (DEIC or VOC). This man was Jan van Riebeeck, who landed at the Cape in 1652. The making of wine was never on the company's agenda, but any man of high standing knew that producing wine from one's own vineyard was the epitome of status.

A few years later, free burghers had crossed the Cape Flats and set up farms under the shadows of the Cape Fold Mountains. Van Riebeeck left the Cape in 1662. Wine continued to be made and consumed at the Cape but the quality was dreadful because the grapes were picked far too soon in order to prevent the birds eating them. In addition the long sea voyage adversely affected the wine; therefore the European wine drinkers found it generally unpalatable. Before the founder of Groot Constantia arrived at the Cape 17 years after Van Riebeeck, there was a slow decline on all levels; the small colony was in disarray and the wine industry was in a sad state.

No excuse for making bad wine

The minute Commander Simon van der Stel stepped off the ship in Table Bay (1679), the fortunes of the Cape changed. He was a highly competent, learned and busy man. He was the son of a mixed marriage and hailed from the Island of Mauritius. His re-organizing of the Cape started with a visit to the Hottentots-Holland with a chance detour to an area loosely called Wildebosch, where he founded a free burgher settlement and called it Stellenbosch, a name that has become synonymous with the wine industry of South Africa. At first the free burghers who produced wine did not want to follow his advice on methods of grape cultivation and winemaking. His new ideas included leaving the grapes on the vine for as long as possible, new processing methods and promotion of hygiene. However, with the first favourable export of wine from Van der Stel’s vineyard to Holland, the farmers started following his methods.

Van der Stel has been recorded as being extremely good at enriching the Cape Colony and his own pocket in equal measure.  As an employee of the VOC he was not allowed to profit by using his position in any way. Free burghers were granted only fifty hectares for their farms. Van der Stel managed to acquire a 750-hectare grant in 1685 from the visiting commissioner, Hendrik Adriaan van Reede tot Drakenstein, as a result of encouragement from Commissioner Van Goens; in thanks, Van der Stel named Constantia after Van Goens’s granddaughter. This grant was extended to 8500 hectares for grazing rights. Before asking for this grant, Van der Stel had done an extensive survey of soil samples throughout the Peninsula. These samples were sent to Holland for testing to find the best site for a wine farm. Once he had obtained the results, he put forward the request for his chosen area, later to be called Constantia. Here Van der Stel created his pride and joy, which became the showcase of wine farms. Most of the layout of the farm we see today is Van der Stel’s but the buildings have changed in appearance, from ones of red face bricks and clinker bricks to beautiful neoclassical buildings under Hendrik Cloete’s watch.

Before Simon van der Stel's death in 1712, he set many of his slaves free. He was extremely generous with one particular free slave. She was Francina Grutting, who had been born on the farm and lived there her whole life; he gave her 3000 guldens, half the governor’s linen and a bed with all its accessories. It is recorded that he died on his beloved farm a lonely sad man with no family around him. He is buried in the Groote Kerk in Cape Town.

The years before the golden age

In 1714 Constantia was divided up and sold. The property was split into Bergvliet and Klein Constantia, both of which  went to the auctioneer, Pieter de Meijer, and the remainder, later called Groot Constantia, went to Captain Oloff Bergh. Bergh had worked for the Company and had been sentenced for theft and neglect of duties. With this background, it is understandable that he did nothing to improve his newly acquired farm. He is better known for his marriage to Anna de Koningh, an extremely beautiful woman who was the daughter of Batavian slaves. After Bergh's death, Anna owned the farm for the next ten years. After she had sold the farm, it changed hands several times, coming  into the possession of Jan Serrurier who was once the owner of Alphen. He owned Constantia for 11 months but did not make a success of it, owing to hail damage, which resulted in a poor crop. However, the fortunes of Constantia were about to change. In fact, the fortunes of the wine industry throughout the Cape were to see 50 years of unprecedented success and prosperity.

During Van der Stel’s time at Constantia (without his wife, who had remained in Holland) it is recorded that he held lavish parties, with many well-known guests. On the business front he had a thriving wine export business. The last few years of his life were a different story. His sons, Willem Adriaan and Frans, were recalled from the Cape for their extravagant misuse of their positions in the Company. Willem Adriaan had succeeded his father as governor and had taken self-enrichment to a new level. He gave himself a farm, Vergelegen, in Somerset West with the use of 600 Company slaves at no charge and engaged in unfair direct trade with the Company, undermining the other farmers in the Cape. His undoing was coming up against far more sophisticated free burghers, the result of the arrival of the Huguenots, 200 religious refugees from France, who were learned and skilled. Within one generation they had assimilated well with the Dutch and had elevated the simple farmer to head of his own manor. When the free burghers, under Adam Tas, complained about Willem Adriaan’s behaviour, he had some of them locked up in the Castle. Five of the ringleaders were deported to Holland. There this new breed of farmers put their case before the Dutch East India Company: Willem Adriaan’s plans backfired and he found himself recalled instead.

Perfect wine, golden years

In 1778 Hendrik Cloete, one of the Cape’s largest landowners and a successful wine farmer, bought Constantia. This was the beginning of the Cloete dynasty which was to span five generations and would put Cape wines on the world map. These wines were of such high standing and unique taste that they were drunk by kings and noblemen.

Cloete was an excellent winemaker but history also played a part in his success and that of the wine industry at the Cape. During the last half of the 18th century, the politics of Europe played a major role. The French Revolutionary wars and the Napoleonic wars cut off the flow of wine from France, and the Cape became a new source of wine for England (a new wine-drinking country) and other European powers. At this stage, the Dutch East India Company was in decline, never to recover.

The new wealth resulting from the export of wine was reflected in the homes of the farmers. Homesteads became bigger; the once simple oblong houses changed into bigger U-plans, T-plans and H-plans. The most obvious feature reflecting the new-found wealth was the use of embellished gables. Fashions in Europe influenced the design of the gables at the Cape but a unique local flair was added, as the craftsmen (mostly from the Far East) were ex-slaves and tradesmen whose cultural influence crept into the designs. Hendrik Cloete plastered and white-washed Van der Stel’s red face brick house. He kept the layout of the farm buildings but renovated them in the Cape Dutch style. He added the large wine cellar behind the manor house, sparing no money. He probably used the most celebrated architect of the time, Louis Michel Thibault, and had Anton Anreith create the stucco relief above the front door of the wine cellar. He raised the manor house by making the ground floor into cellars, the old first floor becoming the ground floor. The ground in front of the house was built up to accommodate this change. The house was widened and the roof made higher.  Then he added a most beautiful neoclassical gable of the rare halsgewel type that was taller than any in the Cape. 

In 1780 war was declared between Britain and France. Because the Cape was under Dutch control and therefore allied with France, a year later a large French force arrived at the Cape to defend it against the British. During their short stay, Cape Town was known as ‘Little Paris’ –  one can just imagine the amount of local wine consumed, to the delight of the local farmers.

In 1795 the British took control of the Cape after a short battle at Muizenberg. At first, the burghers were very unfriendly to their new masters, but the burghers had to sign an oath of allegiance to the British at the Castle or face deportation. Some Anglo-Dutch friendships did develop, as in the case of Lady Anne Barnard and Hendrik Cloete. The British left the Cape for a short time after Britain and Holland had signed a peace treaty. During this time, the wine farmers experienced a slump in export sales and had to rely on local sales and passing ships.

Within seven years, the British were again at war with their old enemy and were back at the Cape after a short battle at Blaauwberg. Again, the wine trade benefited, with France once more not trading wine with Britain. At this time, Hendrik Cloete died and his son, also named Hendrik, took over the farm. He was just as successful as his father and his red and white wines were well received and acknowledged overseas. When he died, his wife,  Anna Catherina, ran the farm for six years until her son, Jacob Pieter, was old enough to take over. During his tenure, the farm was first known as Groot Constantia; this was to distinguish it from his brother’s farm, Klein Constantia. This was at a time when its wines had unprecedented acceptance. Louis Philippe of France sent emissaries to the Cape to buy his wine; the King of Prussia was also on his order books. Napoleon Bonaparte, exiled on the island of St Helena, ordered it by the caseload, and it is said that while he lay dying, his last request was for a glass of Constantia wine.

So popular was Constantia wine that Jane Austen ‘name dropped’ it in her novel, Sense and Sensibility; Charles Dickens made reference to Constantia wine in his writings too, and famous poets sang its praises. 

What made Groot Constantia wine so different? What was the secret? The renowned botanist  William Burchell, who visited the farm in 1811, explained in his writing the methods used. The vines at Constantia were kept as dwarf bushes and the grapes were allowed to hang on the vine close to the ground. This allowed the heat off the ground to affect the grapes and give them a higher sugar content. The branches were twisted to reduce nutritional flow, the result being a richer, sweeter quality. Grapes were left on the vine as long as possible, to the point of allowing the grapes to shrivel, making the juice almost a syrup. Finally, wines were always blended. The result of all these methods was an incomparable sweet full-bodied dessert wine.

Jacob was riding high at this time, but just as the war in Europe had benefited the Cape wine farmers and made them rich, peace between Britain and France, which came about at the end of the Napoleonic wars, made them poorer. France once again exported wine to Britain, cutting the Cape out of the market by price and location. To save the wine industry in the Cape, the British government in 1825 placed heavy tariffs on French wine; this seemed to give the Cape farmers a reprieve. 1834 was the year of the emancipation of the slaves, which affected the farmers not just financially but politically; the result was the beginning of the Great Trek by many Cape farmers. 

The final nail in the coffin, to end the golden years of wine farming in the Cape, was a disastrous fungal disease that swept through the wine-farming communities in 1872. Jacob’s financial situation took such a bad knock that he was declared insolvent. He managed to keep the farm, which he gave to his son, Hendrik, who then gave it to his son, Freddie. Hendrik, probably still in shock from what had happened to his father, left for Europe on a ten-year quest to study and find solutions to fungal problems in viticulture.

The end and a new beginning

In 1885 Groot Constantia was sold by public auction for £5000 and was bought by the Cape government to be used as an experimental wine farm. This new institution was run by Baron Carl von Babo who, on his arrival at the farm, could not believe that grapes were still pressed by labourers' feet. That same year, the dreaded phylloxera epidemic, which had ravaged vineyards around the world, finally arrived at the Cape, starting on a farm at Mowbray. It did not take long for it to spread to other vineyards throughout the Cape. Groot Constantia did not escape the scourge, which meant new vines, grafted onto American disease-resistant stock, were planted. An advantage of the need to replant was that rows were made wider in accordance with modern practice.