Day 2: The Emperor's Obsession

In 1685, governor Simon van der Stel rode out from Cape Town and found a valley where two mountain ranges funneled cool ocean air onto south-facing slopes. He named his estate Groot Constantia and planted Muscat de Frontignan. Within decades, the sweet wine produced here became the most expensive in the world.

Napoleon ordered 30 bottles a month to St. Helena and complained bitterly when shipments were late. Frederick the Great of Prussia hoarded it. The French court served it at Versailles. Jane Austen wrote it into Sense and Sensibility as the cure for a broken heart. Baudelaire and Dickens referenced it. For 150 years, Constantia was synonymous with luxury.

Then phylloxera hit in the 1860s and destroyed everything. The recipe was lost for over a century.

In 1986, Klein Constantia quietly released Vin de Constance — a painstaking recreation using the original Muscat de Frontignan vines, naturally raisined on the vine, fermented slowly. The first sip is liquid history: honeyed, complex, with that distinctive orange-blossom character that made emperors obsess.

Groot Constantia (founded 1685) is the oldest producing wine estate in the Southern Hemisphere. Estate records from 1788 document 60 enslaved workers by name and role. The beauty and the brutality sit side by side, as they do across all of South African wine.