Tucked behind Table Mountain, the Constantia Valley is the oldest wine estate in the country.
Someone once wrote that Mother Nature smiled when she prepared the Constantia Valley for wine growing.
She bestowed on it the sun, moon, ocean and fertile soil
and challenged people to plant vineyards to make excellent wine.
In the seventeenth century the challenge was taken up by governor, Simon van der Stel,
owner of the Cape’s first extensive vineyards, and it was here that he made his first home.
But it was only a 100 years later when the Cloetes arrived that Constantia wine began
to reach the heights of fame in far off Europe. The legendary red and white wines
of this estate were praised by celebrated writers such as Charles Dickens and Longfellow
It was recommended to one of Jane Austen’s heroines in Sense and Sensibility for it had ‘healing powers for a disappointed Heart'.
Even the seemingly staid Queen Victoria drank a ‘man’s size glass of Constantia wine every evening after dinner’.
It beguiled kings of Holland, France and Briton who served it to their guests at state banquets.
Napoleon, in lonely exile on St Helena Island, found solace in drinking a bottle a day,
and on his deathbed a glass of Constantia wine was his last request.
In the niche of the upper part of the manor house’s gable is a figure symbolizing abundance....very
appropriate for this fertile valley.
The furniture and artifacts within reflect the rich, cultural conditions of the Cape,
and the original floor has an inlay of a 5 pointed star representing the 5-pointed fort of the Dutch East India company,
and some of the crockery bears the company’s insignia.
Behind the manor house is surely one of the most elegant wine cellars ever seen.
Three generations of Cloetes lived at Groot Constantia. They were a large and fruitful family
and it was a Cloete who acquired the nearby Alphen manor house.
Frequented by Lord Charles Somerset, Governor of the Cape, it became the centre of social life
and the base for the Constantia hunt with all the trimmings of balls and dinners.
The Boer and Brit pub recalls a period of the Anglo Boer War and the spy network that operated from Alphen.
High ranking British Officers such as Lord Kitchen and Lord Robertson would be entertained here by the owner,
Henry Cloete, who was pro-British.
Cloete’s wife, however, was very pro-Boer.
In her role as chatelaine of the manor she was in a prime position to hear
privileged information at the dinner table. She would post the information in a hollow tree
from where it was sent to Boer Headquarters in Pretoria.
She was a very strong-willed woman.