Johan Anthonisz van Riebeeck, a ship’s surgeon in the service of the Dutch East India Company, a spice company, was South Africa’s first wine maker.  He was Dutch and it was, therefore, the Dutch and not the French that started making wine in South Africa. As a matter of fact, the first wine was made by people who had no idea what they were doing and the best advice they had was from a passing sailor who had seen it done in his own home country! There are no recipes in this article simply because it would make it all too long

somehow, doesn’t fit. Drinking wine and brandy was standard practice in Jan van Riebeeck’s days and he was a extremely enthusiastic wine maker (or perhaps I should rephrase that and say that he was most enthusiastic in his endeavours to get his gardeners to make it).  The fact that importing the stuff from Europe cost a living fortune must have weighed heavily on his mind and the health of his people was deteriorating fast , so wine was desperately needed  for medical purposes.  He waited patiently  for his second consignment of cuttings to arrive because the first consignment rotted on board ship (they had been over-watered) and he had to wait 18 months for it to arrive. He was overjoyed when the   ”Spaanse druyven” (Spanish grapes) did arrive, but they weren’t Spanish – in fact, they came from

France. (It seems that the grape he was referring to was a Muscat d’ Alexandrine grape, known as Hanepoot) I think van Riebeeck was  extremely courageous, even tenacious to attempt to make wine in the Cape since he had no idea how to do it, save for what he had read in a book.  He writes, in his diary, about that first year, of a wet winter – seemingly unfertile soil  and strong Cape winds. His people were suffering very bad health and wine became very important for a ship’s surgeon since it was believe, in those days, that wine was very beneficial to good health. Here was a man in crisis even though, possibly, this tenacity was could have been due to a small indiscretion in the East when he was recalled to Holland, put out on the red carpet by his furious company bosses back in Holland and given an ultimatum. 1n 1656 two ships, the Dordrecht and the Parel brought the first French vines that were turned into wine by the Head Gardener, Hendrik Boom and his assistant Jacob Cloete van Kempen who was the ancestor of the Cloetes of Constantia Wine Farm. Interestingly they learnt how to make wine from a German sailor that was passing by and he remembered how things were done back in the Rhineland. After that the grapes were pretty much left alone and looked after themselves and each year the roots went down deeper.  After the first attempts to plant vines in Green Point failed miserably the first large scale farm was laid out in an area known today as the source of the Liesbeeck River. The farm was first known as Wijnbergen but later renamed Bosheuwel. On the 2nd of February 1659 van Riebeeck records

that ” today, praise be to God, wine was pressed for the first time from Cape grapes“. To all winemakers, everywhere, this is a historic day and from that day on great things have come from the little country at the foot of Africa. Van Riebeeck’s presence fades when he leaves the Cape in 1662 and he dies in, then, Batavia in 1677 at the young age of 58.  Wine farming thrived at the Cape and a rather self serving man, Commander Simon van Der Stel becomes the next prominent player in the history of wine. Without van Riebeeck at the Cape there was chaos and van der Stel, at least, restored a modicum of order to the industry and to life in general. He was a well cultured and well travelled man and in Groot Constantia he set an example to be respected to this day. However, as far as I am concerned he was the father of corruption in the country, an immoral man, a crook, a liar and a thief who grabbed every bit of land that he laid his eyes on for himself – quite contrary to all Company rules! On the other hand he did teach the early winemakers to allow the grapes to ripen first before harvesting and he set up a committee that would visit all farms to see to it that this rule was adhered to – if not they paid a fine of 60 rijksdaalders. (Early Cape farmers harvested early to prevent the birds from eating all the fruit but this gave the wine an unpleasant acidic edge). He taught how important cleanliness was in the wine making process – especially when it came to the casks and he devised many new methods to do so.  With his guidance the gardeners of Groot Constantia created the beginnings of a truly great wine growing tradition that would result in some of the most magnificent wines ever drunk. The year 1688 saw the arrival of about

200 French Huguenots who had fled France when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes and the religious tolerance of Protestants went out the window.  Strangely only very few of these immigrants knew anything about making wine but they started off learning quickly and wine making which, I believe, pulses through the veins of the French in much the same way as the magical art of  cooking runs through the veins of the Italians, gave birth to an area known today as Franschoek   where so many of the great wine farms of the Cape are found. Willem Adriaan van der Stel, a scoundrel, was the son of Simon and he was appointed as governor in 1699 – incidentally the same year that the first wine exports left the Cape. Despite his brilliant scientific mind, all that is loathsome in the father was duplicated in the son. He was passionate about horticulture and had an obsession with finding agriculture land to cultivate.

He experimented widely in the period that he owned Vergelegen - yet another illegally acquired country estate (600 of his Company’s slaves were diverted for his own personal use)  where his biggest passion, viticulture was received most of his attention. Every bit of progress, every setback every new discovery was reported to the community at large with advice and suggestions and in this way he redeemed himself somewhat. He has to be credited for his Gardeners Almanack – a guide for viticulturists of the 18th century – which must have been of enormous help to those early wine farmers who were giving birth to a relatively unknown art and were teetering very much in the dark. It was when he picked a fight with Henning Huysen and Adam Tas that he drew the short straw. He made the terrible mistake of underestimating the wrath of these men and the other ringleaders  and promptly brought them to trial. At this trial they, brilliant orators that they were, spoke up about his excesses and rarely missed one. His bosses were livid, he was relieved of his post and sent into exile in Holland in 1708. The era ended with the death of his father in 1712 and it also completes the first cycle of the history of wine in South Africa.