in the development of a winemaking culture, “details of their specific contributions are conspicuously lacking.”
While keeping in mind that the objective for the settlement at the Cape was not to build a major wine industry, the governor took account of the growing significance of wine to the little society and its economy. He encouraged the use of new varieties, and perhaps introduced the Pontac and Muscat de Frontignan that were going to be important in his personal adventure in wine; he imposed some controls over sales (again, the company’s interests, needs, and revenues were paramount); and he attempted to improve quality. He had long found local wine to be “exceptionally harsh,” and was aware that slovenly and ignorant practices in vineyard and cellar were to blame. He tried to do something about the problem of lack of ripeness at harvest; a committee was established to visit wineries and ascertain that the grapes were adequately ripe before they were pressed.
Early exports had already foundered because of poor quality. The first tiny export seems to have been to Batavia in 1679, and some samples also braved the journey back to Amsterdam, where the Lords Seventeen found it “not bad,” but expensive in comparison with Canary and Spanish wine. But there were complaints from Holland and Batavia, and in 1688 the Cape was told firmly not to send any more. If exports were not going to supply the company with income, however, sales at home were starting to do so, through licenses, taxes, and excise duties. English buccaneer and author William Dampier was pleased to find in the 1690s, “The country is of late so well stocked with Vineyards that they make abundance of Wine of which they have enough and to spare, and do sell great quantities to Ships that touch here.” The no doubt more respectable Reverend J. Ovington noted in 1696 that an “exorbitant Fine upon the Tavern and Tipling Houses makes them exact extravagant Rates from the Guests that drink the Liquor.”
Van der Stel’s most significant contribution to winegrowing was the tradition of excellence he established at the large estate he was granted, called Constantia. Even today the past of Constantia is important to the present, something that the industry as a whole can invoke with pride—and relief, for without Constantia, the older history of South African wine would be a much more depressing story. The land there was transformed into a flourishing farm through its owner’s “salutary zeal” and, one must presume, even more so through the zeal of his many slaves; farm buildings, slave quarters, and a house were built; the vineyard was larger and more carefully planted and tended than any other in the Cape at the time. By 1700, the year after he retired to live at Constantia, further additions and grants had given him a virtual empire in the Cape Peninsula, where he farmed wheat and cattle on a large scale, as well as vines. The “Governor’s wine,” made in the sweet, liquorous style then most in demand, soon established a reputation for excellence in the Cape and even beyond, first in Batavia (where it was found that “the wine from Constantia is of a much higher quality than any sent out so far”) and Holland, and then farther afield. Numerous accounts survive of more or less distinguished visitors to the Cape, who frequently called in at the principal estates. French traveler François Valentijn visited first in 1705, and gave “principal praise and honour” to van der Stel and his son (at Vergelegen) “since, although before their times there were already vines here, and wine had already been pressed, it is certain that the old Heer van der Stel brought to his outstanding country estate many sorts of vine stocks from Germany and elsewhere, previously unknown here; also that until now there is no wine to be compared to the red Constantia wine.”
This is perhaps the place to note that in fact, up through the nineteenth century, it is impossible to be sure what varieties were grown. Bewildering numbers of names are mentioned by travelers—mostly carrying little conviction to modern readers, on account of some strange names and stranger associations (Pontac as “the great grape of Côte-Rôtie,” for example), and there is little more than frustration to be had from learning that Vergelegen at the end of the seventeenth century had “Russelaar, Pottebakker, and a Persian long white variety, as well as varieties from Avignon, Champagne and Burgundy.” We can be sure, however, in that the first century of Cape viticulture, more or less important contributions were made by Greengrape (Sémillon), White French (Palomino), Steen (Chenin Blanc), a few Muscats, and Pontac (a grape of the teinturier type). In fact it does seem that white grapes have dominated the Cape vineyard, with little real competition until the twentieth century brought demand for more red wines on the local market.
Simon van der Stel died in 1712. The outlying properties reverted to the Dutch East India Company, and Constantia itself was divided into three portions and auctioned off. The tradition of Constantia wine was continued and developed particularly on the portions known as Groot Constantia (“large Constantia,” the home farm, with the estate buildings) and Klein Constantia (“little Constantia”—but not the same as the present estate of that name). It was Johannes Colijn, into whose hands Klein Constantia soon passed, who established the large export market for Constantia, to such an extent that in the 1730s demand had outstripped supply. Fortunately, Groot Constantia, after a period in which its potential had been somewhat neglected, acquired a new owner, and a long and profitable partnership arrangement between the two properties was initiated. It continued through some ownership changes—during which it seems the quality of the wine fell off somewhat—until Hendrik Cloete acquired Groot Constantia in 1776 and inaugurated a renewed and perhaps heightened period of excellence in the wine of Constantia, soon coinciding with the new marketing possibilities that were to emerge with the passing of the Cape into British control.
Simon van der Stel had been succeeded as governor in 1699 by his eldest son, Willem Adriaan, who confused more culpably than his father the distinction between serving his private interests and performing his duties. In the history of South African wine he is remembered now as the founder of another great estate, Vergelegen, acquired almost as soon as he took office. As Louis Leipoldt, in his 300 Years of Cape Wine, notes, “no expense, either on his or the Company’s part, was spared to make it a most imposing undertaking.” As well as establishing fruit orchards and cattle and sheep stations, and having a mansion built that reportedly required the services of very many of the company’s slaves in its construction, he also planted substantial vineyards. Despite this, there is no account of the wines being comparable to Constantia’s. There was, in fact, little time for the vines and wines to reach their potential. An arrogant—not to say illegal, torturous, and brutal—confrontation with some of the wealthier burghers, who objected to Willem Adriaan’s attempts to monopolize for his own profit various parts of trade including the export of wine, led to his downfall. In 1707 he was exiled, and soon thereafter the splendid estate was broken up.
Meanwhile, the colony expanded ever-farther outward from Cape Town, as farmers sought new grazing lands not exhausted by their cattle and new sources of cheap meat once they had shot the wild animals with which the plains had teemed on their arrival. The settlement was growing—largely through natural increase, as the company thought that economic circumstances precluded absorbing more white immigrants as some had proposed (the alternative, considering labor needs, was to bring in more slaves, which is what was done). But expansion in the eighteenth century had little effect on wine production: wine lands that would become economically viable once roads and railways were built were still impossible to develop. The only way a farmer could take his barrels of wine to sell in Cape Town was expensively and laboriously by ox-drawn wagon, which meant that wine was produced only within a few days’ journey of the market. Transportation even for those farmers was a problem; a new hard road across the sandy Cape Flats reached Klapmuts near Paarl only around the middle of the nineteenth century, when it almost halved the transport costs of farmers in that region.
In 1752 a Swedish traveler, Anders Sparrman, noted that after leaving the areas of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein the only vineyard he found was one for domestic use at Swellendam. In those two areas and in the peninsula, however, production and planting grew steadily during the eighteenth century. It much more than doubled between 1700 and 1750, by which date nearly four million vines were producing about 3,000 leaguers of wine. By 1794 these figures had increased by about 150 percent; Drakenstein (the larger Paarl area today) was responsible for more than half of production, followed by Stellenbosch; the “Cape” contributed less than a tenth.
