Strauss & co - 26 - 28 July 2020, Online

16 Klein Constantia ‘One of the most mythical vineyards in the world’ – French Institute des Paysages et Architectures Viticoles Described as one of the world’s most beautiful vineyards, Klein Constantia is set amidst ancient trees and lush greenery on the upper foothills of the Constantiaberg, with superb views across the Constantia Valley and False Bay. Its history dates back to 1685, when an enormous tract of land was granted to the Dutch East India Company’s tenth commander at the Cape, Simon van der Stel. He had specifically requested this property on the undulating foothills of Table Mountain’s backbone, not only for its beauty, but also for its decomposed granite soils on slopes gently cooled by ocean breezes – the perfect conditions for quality winegrowing. It was about 15 times the size of a normal land grant and he named it Constantia, perhaps signifying his intention to make the Cape his constant or permanent home. By the time of his promotion to governor in 1691, Van der Stel had 10 000 vines planted at Constantia, and when the first small cask of his wine was shipped to Dutch East India Company headquarters in Batavia in 1692, the feedback was good: ‘The wine from Constantia is of a much higher quality than any sent out so far, but obviously only obtainable in small quantities.’ Vin de Constance Flagship In 1705, Dutch minister, naturalist and author Francois Valentijn described Constantia as the Cape’s ‘choicest wine … so divine and enticing in taste’… Lusciously sweet Constantia wine was famous, in its own right, within a remarkably short period of time. It was savoured by royalty from Frederick the Great of Prussia to Louis XVI of France, who by 1782 had more ‘Vin du cap de Constance’than Burgundy in his cellar at Versailles. It was appreciated by American founding fathers George Washington and John Adams, and perhaps most famously, reserved for Napoleon Bonaparte’s personal enjoyment while in exile on St Helena. Given pride of place in the cellars of the world’s greatest wine collectors, Constantia was also immortalised by some the great poets and authors of the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1811, English novelist Jane Austen wrote that ‘the finest old Constantia wine’was the perfect remedy for a ‘disappointed heart’ in Sense in Sensibility, while Charles Dickens told of ‘the support embodied in a glass of Constantia and a home-made biscuit’ in The Mystery of Edwin Drood , the novel he was still writing when he died in 1870. French poet Charles Baudelaire, on the other hand, wrote in Sed non Satiata (1857) of lust so insatiable that a lover’s lips were craved more than Constantia, or even opium. As a result, the legend of Constantia wine lived on long after production ceased during the late 1800s for a combination of reasons, including vine diseases, labour shortages and farm bankruptcies. Wines that had brought pleasure all over the world might have disappeared forever had it not been for their resurrection at Klein Constantia in the 1980s. The property was restored in 1983 and the then owners nurtured a secret dream: to bring back the one truly, historically great wine ever made in the southern hemisphere. In 1986 just two barrels were made and the resurrected ‘Vin de Constance’ has once again become one of the world’s greatest sweet wines. After four years in oak barrels, the first Vin de Constance of the modern era was released in distinctive (and trademarked) ‘old-fashioned’bottles to almost instant acclaim. Once again gracing royal tables, from Buckingham Palace to Versailles, and the pages of popular fiction, the wine has enjoyed the highest accolades ever since, both locally and internationally, and is the first South African wine in history to have joined the Bordeaux Négociant Market.