Wines of the New South Africa. Tim James
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.
Who bought and drank this wine? Export possibilities remained limited, largely for reasons of poor quality—apart from the growing interest in Constantia. The company generally kept a monopoly on trade. At home it wanted wine for its hospital, slaves, local company officials, and use on company ships, as well as for the East Indies. Through the first half of the eighteenth century particularly, as both production and demand continually shifted—before settling into the dominant pattern of overproduction—the company sometimes tried to find external markets for wine; and sometimes it disallowed private sales to ships when its own needs met supply. In 1793 the company bought about 13 percent of the total production. The rest would have been sold on the local market, and to visiting ships when possible.
FROM 1795 TO 1910
In the internationally war- and revolution-ravaged decades around the close of the 1700s the little outpost of Europe at the foot of Africa changed hands three times, with great implications for it—and its wine industry. As the vines were coming into leaf in 1795, Dutch East India Company rule was ended by the first British occupation. This was maintained until 1803, but the subsequent period of Netherlandish rule lasted only until the British occupation of 1806, which led to the cession of the Cape Colony to Britain in 1814.
War, and specifically the change of regime, was good for the wine trade here: commercial and naval shipping traffic and the British garrison presence prompted a substantial increase in plantings and production. The population also exploded about this time. The Khoisan were not counted, but the number of Europeans rose from 7,736 in 1770 to more than 20,000 by the end of the century and more than double that by 1820; the slave population rose from 8,200 to nearly 32,000 in that total period. That figure inevitably includes a lot of wine drinkers, even apart from the Khoisan (laborers and slaves were given rations of wine, largely as part of a system of social control, in a precursor to the notorious tot system).
Just under ten million vines were recorded for 1795, and the number more than doubled over the next decade, particularly in the Stellenbosch and Paarl-Drakenstein areas. Many of the grander rural examples of Cape Dutch architecture—those lovely whitewashed and elaborately gabled buildings—date from this time of prosperity for the larger and more successful farmers.
The economic health of Britain’s new colony as a whole was not robust, however. The colonial masters sought a viable export commodity in order to generate local revenue and address the chronic trade deficit. They decided to foster the Cape wine industry even though there was already awareness of problems of quality: apart from what they tasted themselves, they knew that other export markets had been lost when Cape wines had been rejected. In 1813 duties payable on Cape wines imported into Britain were substantially reduced, as Governor Cradock was to announce “with the most lively satisfaction.” A short-lived golden age for Cape exporters had begun. It ended in 1825 when the preferential tariffs were reduced—Cape wine was still to be charged lower duties than most others, but the major incentive was gone, particularly when transport costs and the quality problem were taken into account.
By 1825 there were more than 31 million vines planted, a threefold increase from 1795—most of them Greengrape (Sémillon, that is), for reasons discussed in chapter 3. Wine production varied remarkably from year to year, but generally rose steadily over the period: in the five years 1821–1825 it averaged just under 17,000 leaguers. Production of infamously bad Cape brandy was fairly static at little more than 1,000 leaguers. The expanding home market remained hugely important, though exports increased. In 1813, just 200 leaguers of Cape wine went to dubiously delight palates in the new mother country, less than a tenth of that year’s exports. This figure rose dramatically: the average export of ordinary wine to Britain for the period 1821–1825