The Wines of South Africa

By Jim Clarke

Within a few years of establishing a Dutch settlement in the Western Cape in 1652, the new inhabitants had begun to make wine to fortify crews sailing from Europe to the colonies in East Asia via the Cape. Just a century later, South Africa was producing wines of repute, with those made at Constantia favoured by both Napoleon and his great rival the Duke of Wellington. Since then, both disease and political upheavals have seen South Africa’s wine industry suffer and recover several times. The modern industry was born with the end of apartheid, and has been marked by repeated waves of innovation, transformation, and ambition.
Jim Clarke has been following South Africa’s wine industry intently over the last 15 years. He begins The wines of South Africa by addressing the country’s history, with its pioneering spirit entwined with a legacy of colonialism and slavery. Clarke goes on to discuss the efforts being made by the wine business to address the issue of racial inequality, with education programmes, worker empowerment initiatives, and land restitution all being employed to create opportunity and redress the balance. He also focuses on issues of climate and industry structure that provide challenges for the country’s wine producers.
Clarke gives readers a comprehensive insight into the landscape, geology and climate that help create South Africa’s wines, noting the growth of terroir-driven, expressive wines that today define the top-end of quality and character. Since the end of apartheid, vineyard plantings have changed dramatically, and a chapter on the key grapes outlines the current range of varieties and their typical expression in the Cape. Finally, each region is explored in detail, with key producers, both big names and new innovators, profiled. Altogether, this thorough exploration of the fascinating story of South African wine is an invaluable guide to a wine country that is going from strength to strength.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Académie du Vin Library
• Release date: Jul 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781917084352

Jim Clarke

Jim Clarke has written about wine for more than twelve years in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, World of Fine Wine, and NPR. He was a sommelier and wine director in New York City for several years. He specializes in the wines of South Africa, and for the past five years has been the U.S. Marketing Manager for Wines of South Africa.

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THE CLASSIC WINE LIBRARY

Editorial board: Sarah Jane Evans MW,

Richard Mayson and James Tidwell MS

There is something uniquely satisfying about a good wine book, preferably read with a glass of the said wine in hand. The Classic Wine Library is a series of wine books written by authors who are both knowledgeable and passionate about their subject. Each title in The Classic Wine Library covers a wine region, country or type and together the books are designed to form a comprehensive guide to the world of wine as well as an enjoyable read, appealing to wine professionals, wine lovers, tourists, armchair travellers and wine trade students alike.

Port and the Douro, Richard Mayson

Cognac: The story of the world’s greatest brandy, Nicholas Faith

Sherry, Julian Jeffs

Madeira: The islands and their wines, Richard Mayson

The wines of Austria, Stephen Brook

Biodynamic wine, Monty Waldin

The story of champagne, Nicholas Faith

The wines of Faugères, Rosemary George MW

Côte d’Or: The wines and winemakers of the heart of Burgundy, Raymond Blake

The wines of Canada, Rod Phillips

Rosé: Understanding the pink wine revolution, Elizabeth Gabay MW

Amarone and the fine wines of Verona, Michael Garner

The wines of Greece, Konstantinos Lazarakis MW

Wines of the Languedoc, Rosemary George MW

The wines of northern Spain, Sarah Jane Evans MW

The wines of New Zealand, Rebecca Gibb MW

The wines of Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova, Caroline Gilby MW

Sake and the wines of Japan, Anthony Rose

The wines of Great Britain, Stephen Skelton MW

The wines of Chablis and the Grand Auxerrois, Rosemary George MW

The wines of Germany, Anne Krebiehl MW

The wines of Georgia, Lisa Granik MW

The wines of South Africa, Jim Clarke

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. History

2. Transformation and other contemporary issues

3. The structures, regulations, and institutions of South African wine

4. Geography and climate

5. Grape varieties and wine styles

6. Cape Town

7. Stellenbosch

8. Paarl and Wellington

9. Franschhoek

10. Swartland and Darling

11. Tulbagh, Ceres, Cederberg, Olifantsrivier, and the West Coast

12. Breede River Valley

13. Cape South Coast

14. Beyond the Western Cape

Appendix: wine tourism in the Western Cape

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

List of maps

The regions of the Western Cape

The coastal region (overview)

Cape Town district

Stellenbosch and Franschhoek

Paarl and Wellington

Swartland and Darling

Olifantsrivier, Cederberg, and the northwest coast

Breede River Valley

Klein Karoo and the eastern Cape South Coast

Overberg, Walker Bay, and Cape Agulhas

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My introduction to South African wine came about indirectly. In 2003 Wines of Spain, together with the American Sommelier Association, sponsored a writing competition. I was a waiter and composer at the time, but had begun taking the ASA’s courses and was eyeing sommelierhood as a potential career path. I took what I knew about writing music, applied it to my essay, and won a weeklong trip to Rias Baixas. On that, my first professional wine trip, I became friends with Rory Callahan, who had helped organize the competition. He consulted for a number of wine marketing organizations, including Wines of Spain, New Zealand Winegrowers, and Wines of South Africa.

Rory introduced me to South African wine, and arranged my first trip to the country in 2006. He cultivated my interest in and passion for South African wine in many ways; without his influence I would never be in the position to write this book.

I have visited South Africa repeatedly since then. The winery owners, winemakers, viticulturalists, and workers of South Africa’s winelands have always been incredibly welcoming and generous with their time, whether I came as a journalist, a chaperone of WOSA visitors, or simply socially. In researching this book I have looked back to my earliest experiences there as well as spoken to a great many old and new friends. Any thank you to members of the industry will leave someone out, but I would like to mention at least the following: Hans Astrom, Kevin Arnold, Charles Back, Adi Badenhorst, Simon and Murray Barlow, Gary Baumgarten, Sebastian Beaumont, Abrie Beeslaar, Ntsiki Biyela, Petrus Bosman, Jeanette Bruwer, Paul Cluver Jr. and Sr., Jan Coetzee, Danie De Wet, Peter De Wet, Neil Ellis, Pieter Ferreira, Peter Finlayson, Ken Forrester, Boela Gerber, Paul Gerber, Niel Groenewald, Bruce Jack, Marc Kent, Richard Kershaw, Christo and Etienne LeRiche, Attie Louw, Adam Mason, Chris and Andrea Mullineux, David Nieuwoudt, Bruwer Raats, Mike Ratcliffe, Johan Reyneke, Anthony Hamilton Russell, Eben Sadie, Duncan Savage, David Sonnenberg, Danie Steytler, Hannes Storm, Denise Stubbs, David Trafford, Beyers Truter, Carl van der Merwe, Niels Verburg, Conrad Vlok, Thomas Webb, and Chris Williams. Beyond those above directly involved with production at individual wineries, I would also like to thank Rico Basson, Michael Fridjhon, Rosa Kruger, and Linda Lipparoni for their insights and passion. That’s just a sliver of the industry members who, over the years, have provided me with information and context for the creation of this book.

My colleagues present and past at Wines of South Africa have of course been a great source of support and insight as well. Siobhan Thompson, WOSA’s current CEO, as well as her predecessor Su Birch, and Andre Morgenthal, now of the Old Vines Project, have been fantastic resources of information and enthusiasm. So too have been the rest of the WOSA team. In particular I would like to thank Laurel Keenan and the other international members of the team for helping broaden my perspective beyond that of an American sommelier.

Thank you to the Infinite Ideas team, in particular to James Tidwell MS for proposing the creation of this book in the first place and Sarah Jane Evans MW for supporting the idea.

Thank you, finally, to my wife for her support and love. And patience; I’m lucky to have a lifelong partner who not only tolerates being used as a sounding board, but shows real (and honest) interest, not to mention valuable feedback. Two wine writers in one home makes for both company and inspiration.

Any errors in this book are my own.

INTRODUCTION

I first visited South Africa in 2006 as a guest of Wines of South Africa (WOSA), an attendee of CapeWine, their triennial trade show. Cape Town and the winelands were stunning; the confluence of mountains, ocean, and vineyards simply cannot be beaten. In the afternoon, white clouds like cotton candy piled on top of the mountains and dripped down toward the cellars like wax from a candle. At the same time, one could not ignore the corrugated roofs of the townships, or, on Fridays – payday – the workers lying drinking by the side of the road. At one point I took a photo out of the window of our coach: a rainbow – the symbol of this diverse and hopeful nation – visible over the sprawl of the township, the promising heights of the Helderberg in the background.

The wines were equally diverse. Some were deeply impressive; others were clumsy, or even flawed. Many left me sensing a deep well of untapped potential, but the promise they showed was both deep and broad; it manifested in a diverse set of grape varieties both white and red, and could be found in regions old and new.

I think the range of quality reflected that this was not simply an emerging wine industry, but an industry reborn. As early as the mid-eighteenth century European connoisseurs were aware that South Africa could make coveted, world-class wines, even if only a handful of cellars did. Largely cut off from international wine markets for most of the twentieth century, the industry bogged down in a largely self-imposed stasis until the 1990s, when embargoes collapsed and opened the door to international markets. At the same time, massive deregulation encouraged innovation, but also removed the industry’s support structures. In this context, the industry started anew thirty years ago, just as the rest of the country did.

Today South Africa is revealing its potential ever more rapidly. Since around 2008, more and more producers have been allowing the country’s terroir to represent itself unmasked and without affectation. The young winemakers working in the Swartland deserve credit for leading the charge, but the changes have proven to be more widespread. The peaks of South African wine are higher, and the clumsy wines of the past are bygones, or at least as rare as they are in other modernized wine-producing countries. Today one can taste through the wines of South Africa and experience the expansive range of expression the Cape’s many terroirs are capable of without the distraction of manipulated examples that blur or obscure it. Regional specialties – signature varieties – are proving themselves, becoming confident and clear in their identities.

It is with all that in mind that I hope now is indeed a good time for a book. The South African wine industry is certainly not at a resting point; change continues with great rapidity. The economics of the industry are demanding innovation. The need for premiumization is not unique to the country, but it is keenly felt. Vineyard land is shrinking, though it looks like that process, accelerated by drought, is reaching its turning point. Even if plantings do expand the vines’ footprint in the coming decade, they are unlikely to return to their peak. Unless more producers can reduce their dependency on the bulk wine market, however, the cycle may continue. A somewhat smaller, but more premium, industry is not unlikely. Aside from the economics of the situation, political change or social upheaval may drastically impact what is and isn’t possible for the country’s wine cellars. In spite of all those concerns, the industry is at a point where its right to a seat at the table is undisputed by anyone who has taken the time to taste. South Africa is making great wines. There may be surprises to come, but by and large the elements that will articulate what South Africa’s winemakers can achieve are in place.

I say that with all the objectivity and critical perception I can muster. I have been WOSA’s U.S. Marketing Manager since September 2013, and before that assisted them with various marketing activities on a freelance basis. In that sense I am not an independent observer of the country’s wine scene; I have a great deal of interest in and appreciation for the wines, people, and places I am writing about. I hope my passion for these wines comes through in these pages; whatever one’s concerns about bias might be, it is that passion which drove me during my research to explore as deeply as I have. This is as true when it comes to discussions of the character and style of today’s wines as it is when I turn to South Africa’s history and the enduring, ugly legacy of apartheid. South Africa’s winemaking history dates back to the first permanent European settlement of this part of Africa. As such, it is deeply tied together with the country’s broader history, which embodies both a pioneering spirit and deeply colonial, racist attitudes and policies. Almost every South African I have spoken with has been frank and open about the country’s past and current ills. The birth of democracy in South Africa in 1994 brought with it the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and its honest and open approach to South Africa’s past remains a central principle in the country’s efforts to change and improve itself. I hope my approach is in keeping with this attitude.

These issues have been on my mind since before I took my position with WOSA. Regardless of how good the wines are, I would find it difficult to promote an industry in good conscience if I didn’t believe in the integrity and good intentions of its actors. Of course, within the industry as in the country as a whole, disputes as to how best to proceed and frustrations with the slow pace of improvement are commonplace and understandable. During the Zuma years in particular the trust and belief that all parties were working sincerely in good faith toward the betterment of all has been strained and even broken, though hopefully only temporarily. Within South Africa’s wine industry I consistently encounter a one-by-one, individual commitment to building a fair, just, and balanced society.

Across the globe, agricultural workers are typically among the most impoverished and marginalized members of their society. Their poverty may have different, perhaps less overtly racialized roots in other parts of the world, but that makes it no more just. When one considers how little space is dedicated to the needs and conditions of agricultural workers in other books of this kind, I hope the reader will appreciate the time and attention given to these issues here. That said, there is an entire story of winemaking and wine growing to be told, and that, rather than solely the social and historical conditions that surround those activities, has been my focus here. I have assumed that my reader has opened these pages with an interest in and appreciation for South African wines, if perhaps a latent one, just as I, too, wrote it in the spirit and mindset of a former sommelier and a lover of wine. That being the case, the majority of this book is dedicated to the factors such a reader would expect to learn about in a book such as this.

On a related note, English speakers from outside South Africa may find the use here of the words black and coloured jarring. I have tried to use these terms as they are most usually employed within South Africa – while the government typically refers to the black majority as black Africans, black people is the norm in most public discourse. Similarly, coloured is the accepted name for the mixed-race group prominent in the Western Cape. This group is descended from local black people resident at the time of European colonization, Khoisan peoples most especially; European settlers; and slaves, in particular those imported from southeast Asia. The term does not carry the same negative connotations associated with it in the U.S. and elsewhere.

I have devoted more space in the book to context and wide-reaching information – climate, geology, history, etc. – than to profiles of producers. To my mind this is in keeping with a book that hopes to serve as a valuable profile of the country’s wine industry for some time. While I am sure readers will find the wineries included here to be worthy of attention, I hope they will explore further beyond them. The information in this book provides context for appreciating South Africa’s wines, and readers should be able to use it to find the regions and grape varieties most appropriate to their taste. For up-to-date information on the performance of individual wineries, South Africa is blessed with an extremely useful annual resource, the Platter’s Guide, which provides brief profiles and ratings of almost every South African producer’s wines.

Within each region, I have sought to include a range of producers, from properties with centuries of history to some of the youngest brands. My hope is this wide range will demonstrate the scope of production, as well as illustrate what is most representative or interesting within a given region. It’s worth noting that many South African producers do not confine their grape sourcing to a single region. Many premium wineries source very broadly, not just mass-market brands. Chris and Suzaan Alheit make single-vineyard wines from various spots around the Cape, and their most well-known wine, Cartology, is labeled with the broadest Wine of Origin designation, Western Cape. As I have chosen to list producers by region, however, the profile of Alheit falls in the Hemel-en-Aarde section, since that’s where their winery is. This holds true for producers with different brands in far-flung regions as well; Sutherland’s portfolio may consists solely of Elgin wines, but I have nonetheless lumped its entry together with its parent winery, Thelema, in the Stellenbosch section. This may blur the characterization of individual regions somewhat, but speaks to the spirit of exploration that defines contemporary South African wine more generally.

There are two relevant items I have to some degree neglected. The first is brandy. Brandy is almost as old as wine in the Cape, dating back to a ship-born still operating in 1673. Distillation, and with it the production of some very fine brandies, sustained the industry and made viable the operations of the KWV during the bulk of the twentieth century. Brandy deserves its own book, but in the interest of space I have confined my discussion of it to just a few instances where its relevance to wine merited it.

I have also not given South Africa’s wine tourism offerings the attention they deserve, largely for reasons of space, and to avoid redundancies. Such a large number of South African wineries are also home to remarkable restaurants, accommodation, and other tourist facilities that detailing each instance would slow the pace of reading. I have included some general notes on how to make the most of a visit to the Western Cape in the Appendix, and have highlighted the tourist offerings of a given region or wine cellar in only a few instances. This omission has nothing to do with a lack of enthusiasm; after two dozen or so visits I still look forward to my next sojourn in the Cape. I recommend it unreservedly to anyone who enjoys natural beauty, friendly people, good food, and of course, excellent wines.

Jim Clarke

May 2020

1

HISTORY

Today, praise be to God, wine was pressed for the first time from Cape grapes, and the new must fresh from the tub was tasted. It consisted mostly of Muscadel and other white round grapes, of fine flavor and taste.

For many wine regions, the first wine harvest is lost in the mists of time, but South Africa knows its birthday. Jan van Riebeeck recorded the event in his journal on February 2, 1659. He had a particular interest in the success of the wine, since planting vines seems to have been his idea in the first place. Van Riebeeck had arrived at the Cape of Good Hope on April 6, 1652 on the Dromedaris, one of three ships. The journey had taken four months and had not been easy; the two other ships in the convoy, the Walvisch and the Oliphant, arrived the following day, after illness on board delayed them and cost a number of lives. The settlers in their entirety amounted to 90 people. As the commander of the new Colony, Van Riebeeck’s task was to establish a refreshment station that would assist the ships of the Dutch East India Company (the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC) on their journeys back and forth from Holland to Batavia, in what is now Indonesia.

That passage itself was not new. Bartolomeu Dias had rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, proving that sailing around the southern tip of Africa was possible and opening the door to the maritime spice route. He named the Cape Cabo das Tormentas, or Cape of Storms, for the wind and rain that plagued wintertime passages. In what may be the most brazen act of geographical false advertising since Erik the Red returned with tales of Greenland, Portuguese King John II rebranded the Cape’s treacherous waters as the Cabo da Boa Esperança – the Cape of Good Hope – probably to remind reluctant sailors of the riches that lay beyond. Fortunately passage through the Cape at other times of the year was more benign. This Cape is the most stately thing and the fairest cape we saw in the whole circumference of the earth, wrote Sir Francis Drake, on his way home in 1580.

Previously the ships of the VOC and their European counterparts had preferred the safety of St. Helena as a stopover during their voyages to the Far East. The Dutch had been sharing the island with the Portuguese and English, but in 1633 they laid claim to it for themselves. Unfortunately, deforestation and overplanting had heavily depleted the island’s resources by then, and reports suggested that the Cape might make a suitable replacement. Until that time VOC ships had stopped off at the Cape only occasionally, to pick up firewood, trade for cattle from the local Khoikhoi people, or allow a convoy to reassemble after a storm. Van Riebeeck had spent 18 days in Table Bay in 1648, on his return from Tonkin, in what is now Vietnam. It seems his experience made him an early advocate for establishing a colony there, though he may have also been looking for a piece of good news that would reinvigorate his reputation; he had been removed from his Tonkin post for trading privately, in violation of VOC policy.

It was the experience of other sailors that ultimately convinced the Lords Seventeen, the committee that ran the VOC, to invest in a settlement. On March 25, 1647, a ship called the Haarlem or Nieuw Haarlem foundered in Table Bay. Other ships in the convoy carried 52 of the crewmen home to Europe, but 62 men were left behind to salvage what they could. They remained there for over a year, naming their improvised camp Fort Zandenburch (Sandcastle). During that time they regularly traded with the native Khoikhoi peoples, hunted penguins and cormorants, dug a well for fresh water, and otherwise explored the area. The convoy Van Riebeeck was traveling in eventually picked up the survivors, and their positive reports seem to have been a major factor in the Lords Seventeen’s decision to establish a permanent settlement in the Cape.

The first Dutch arrivals endured a rough start, with many lost at sea and over the first winter; having arrived in April, there was insufficient time to plant and harvest supplies or build more than the most basic shelter before winter. The priorities laid down by the VOC included building a fort, planting a flag to make the site visible to Dutch ships, and creating a fleet of pilot boats. There were also fruits, vegetables, and other foodstuffs to be grown. The Lords Seventeen’s instructions made no mention of wine, even though Jan van Riebeeck had suggested it even before the Colony was established. In a 1651 letter to the Lords Seventeen arguing for the creation of a settlement at Table Bay he had noted that although wine acts as a cordial, and strengthens, the seamen are not the less subject to scurvy…. The latter was a popular belief at the time. As the son of a surgeon, and a former ship’s surgeon himself, he could speak with some authority. Appealing to the VOC’s priorities, he went on to point out that healthy sailors are profitable sailors.

THE FIRST VINES

Even though he had no experience with winemaking, once he arrived in the Cape Van Riebeeck couldn’t contain his enthusiasm. Within a month of his arrival and despite the far more pressing issues facing the Colony, Van Riebeeck asked the Lords Seventeen for vine cuttings, arguing – rightly, as history would prove – that they will thrive beautifully along the mountain slopes as well as [they do] in Spain or France. Cuttings arrived in 1654, but perished due to rot contracted during the voyage; a second set arrived in July of the following year and took root successfully. Two VOC employees, Hendrik Boom and Jacob Cloete van Kempen, had a modicum of agricultural knowledge; the latter’s family would eventually steer Groot Constantia through its glory days over a century later. The Colony’s initial plantings were in the Company Gardens, today a public park in the center of Cape Town; the site was later deemed unsuitable for vines due to regular flooding.

Even before South Africa’s first vintage, plantings had spread further abroad, largely thanks to Van Riebeeck’s direct intervention or encouragement. He planted vines at a company plot at Rondebosch in 1656 and two years later at Bosheuvel, along the Liesbeek River. The latter were on land loaned to Van Riebeeck for his personal use; VOC employees were not permitted to own land in the settlement. By this time the Khoikhoi were growing frustrated by Dutch expansion into their grazing lands, and the vineyard at Bosheuvel was destroyed during the first Khoi–Dutch War the following year. Van Riebeeck claims that 400 Hottentots (the Dutch name for the Khoikhoi at the time, in contrast to the hunter-gatherer San, then known as Bushmen, further north) raided the farm, but he nevertheless doubled down in 1658, planting almost ten times as many vines. In 1657 the VOC had released nine employees from their contracts and granted them land in the area to farm on their own; these were the first vrijburghers (free citizens). Their lack of enthusiasm for wine growing frustrated Van Riebeeck until 1660, when he notes in his journal that farmers surrounding Rondebosch and Bosheuvel were finally planting proper vineyards rather than confining themselves to more-or-less decorative vines around their homesteads. The area became known as Wynberg due to the large quantity of vineyards there. In 1660, plantings expanded to Robben Island as well.

Bosheuvel and Rondebosch served as nurseries for the expanding vineyards. These initial vineyards on the eastern side of Table Mountain lasted until the end of the nineteenth century. Once phylloxera had its way with them, there was little hope of replanting given the encroachment of Cape Town’s suburbs. Today the suburbs of Mowbray, Bishopscourt, and Wynberg show little sign of their importance in birthing South Africa’s wine industry. The land that was Rondebosch, for example, is now occupied by part of the University of Cape Town and Rustenberg Girls School. (The farm at Rondebosch was later named Rustenberg, not to be confused with Rustenberg in Stellenbosch.)

The VOC reassigned Van Riebeeck in 1662; upon his departure, one of the vrijburghers purchased the Bosheuvel property. As he left, wine was still very much on Van Riebeeck’s mind. In his final report to the Lords Seventeen, he reported, We have no doubt about the success of the vineyards and grapes, if they are only properly attended to. They will in due course tell their own tale.

Van Riebeeck would go on to become Governor-General of the VOC in the Dutch East Indies, eventually passing away there in 1677. The vineyards he left behind were not in capable hands. He had repeatedly asked the VOC to send people with winemaking experience, but to no avail. Zacharias Wagenaar, Van Riebeeck’s successor, did not let the vines fall into neglect, but neither did he bring additional expertise of his own. In 1664, desperate for knowledgeable assistance, he resorted to borrowing the first mate from a visiting ship to help plant some vines, having heard the sailor in question had some viticultural know-how. In 1676, the VOC leaders in India finally sent an expert by the name of Hans Cockenberger to assist with winemaking in the Cape, along with a wine press, but Cockenberger stayed in the Cape for less than a year.

But production and plantings continued to expand. The wine, whether made at the Company Orchard at Rondebosch or at a vrijburgher’s farm, was by and large destined for sale by the VOC to visiting ships. During the first few decades the Cape saw an average of 33 ships each year. Most were Dutch, but a few were English. While now known as the Mother City, Cape Town’s nickname at the time was The Tavern of the Seas. Within the Colony, the VOC regulated all alcohol heavily by selling or auctioning off a limited number of pachts – retailing licenses, essentially – and pacht holders bought and sold their wares at fixed rates.

Some wine actually made it to foreign ports, Batavia and the Dutch East Indies in particular. A decent market for them seems to have developed in Mauritius as well. It’s hard to say much about the wines themselves, never mind how well they survived the voyage. It’s even difficult to say what varieties were being grown. White varieties dominated; Chenin Blanc, Semillon, and Muscat de Frontignan (Muscadel) were most likely the first varieties planted. A few visitors did comment positively on the wines, and the Lords Seventeen themselves responded encouragingly to a sample sent to Amsterdam in 1666: The wine sent us as a specimen we found, contrary to expectation, to be very well tasted.

Simon van der Stel

After a succession of other commanders, in 1679 the Cape received a commander with both a passion for wine and some experience with viticulture and winemaking. Simon van der Stel was the son of a Company man, born on a ship on its way to Mauritius, where his father would become the island’s first Governor. His mother, notably, was Maria Levens, the daughter of a freed Indian slave. Van der Stel’s mixed parentage went unspoken during the apartheid era. His name is plastered across the landscape in any number of places, far more so than that of Van Riebeeck; reminders that the first Governor of the Cape was, by twentieth-century definitions, coloured, would not have sat well with the architects of apartheid.

Van der Stel was 40 years old when he became Commander of the Cape; he had spent twenty years of his life in the Dutch East Indies and Mauritius, and the other twenty in Holland. He would spend the next twenty ruling and transforming the Cape, before retiring in 1699. Van der Stel owned two vineyards in the Dutch town of Muiderberg and seems to have had some knowledge on how to manage them. His step-father-in-law, Jean Marieau, was also a prominent wine merchant, and is presumably the same Jean Marieau who accompanied Van der Stel to the Cape as a VOC employee. This Marieau, too, is reputed to be knowledgeable about winemaking, but nothing more is known about him.

Van der Stel expanded the European footprint in the Cape dramatically. Under his predecessors, vrijburghers had been confined to areas within a day’s ride of the Castle of Good Hope, at the edge of the water in Table Bay. The year he arrived he scouted out the inland areas for their farming potential, and after camping along the Erste River, decided it would be a suitable spot for a town. He even named it after himself; Stellenbosch means Van der Stel’s woods. By 1683 30 families were living there, and Van der Stel’s City of Oaks was officially designated as a town in 1685. Within two years, settlers would penetrate further inland to the Drakenstein Valley, encompassing what is today Franschhoek, Paarl, and Wellington.

In 1685, French religious politics drove a new group of settlers toward the Cape when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. The edict, in place for almost a century, had forbidden religious persecution; with its termination, Huguenot minorities found themselves looking for friendlier places to call home, and many fled to the Dutch Republic. The Dutch, being of similar, Protestant faith, were welcoming, but were eager to find permanent homes for the emigrants elsewhere. In November of 1687 the Lords Seventeen sent Van der Stel a letter informing him that new settlers were on their way; a group of 138 French refugees arrived the following year, and 20 more the next. By 1692, 201 Huguenots had arrived, making up almost a quarter of the vrijburgher population. Huguenots continued to trickle in until 1720. Most were granted plots of land in the Drakenstein Valley, either in Wagonmakersvallej (Wellington) or Olifantshoek (Elephant Corner). The latter eventually became known by its current name, Franschhoek, or French Corner. The typical arrangement at the time allocated a farmer a 60 morgen (approximately 51 hectares) plot, on the condition that he cultivate it within three years.

It’s generally assumed that the arrival of the French raised the bar for winemaking in the Cape. Certainly the Lords Seventeen thought they would be of help; in the letter notifying Van der Stel of their impending arrival, they noted that, Among them you will find wine-growers, and some of them who understand the making of brandy and vinegar, by which means we expect that you will find the want of which you complain in this respect satisfied. For his part, Van der Stel was unimpressed, at least at first. In 1689 he requested that the VOC not send any more Frenchmen, especially people of quality who were afraid of getting their hands dirty. Those who came from wine-growing regions seem to have seen success producing wine in the Cape; however, it doesn’t seem that their knowledge necessarily rubbed off on others, French or Dutch. Several Huguenots concentrated on wine growing very