Collection: Wines from South Africa

Wine in South Africa, the origins
Wine history in South Africa begins with the arrival from Europe of the very first settlers in the mid-1700s.

At that time, the young Dutch surgeon Jan van Riebeek (who later became governor) sensed the need to make wine and spirits available to the crews of the Dutch East India Company, stopping at the Cape of Good Hope and en route to the Far East. He thus arranged for the arrival of  some vines of Chenin Blanc from France and Moscato from Alexandria (Italy) and, after several attempts, he had the first wine production recorded in South Africa in 1659.
In his diary under the date of February 2, 1659 is written: “....
today, praise be to the Lord, for the first time we have made wine from Cape grapes.”

The next governor, Simon Van der Stel, arrived in South Africa
in 1679 and shortly thereafter founded in Constantia (in Stellenbosch - Cape Town) the very prestigious Klein Constantia winery.
After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), there arrived in Cape Town Cape Town about 200 French Protestant Huguenot refugees, fleeing the religious persecution in their country. These brought to Constantia
all their experience of winemaking practices. It was thus that those wines became the only ones from the so-called “New World” to challenge the wines produced in Europe, and remained the favorite for many years by the Royal Courts. Napoleon himself, in exile on the island of St. Helena, ordered wines from Constantia.

South African wines today
Currently, the grapes grown in South Africa are almost all of French origin, while local is Pinotage, a cross between Pinot Noir and Hermitage (the term by which the Cinsaut grape variety was known). The grape variety Pinotage was created in 1925 in the Faculty of Enology in Stellenbosch, and the popularity of this grape is now an undeniable mark of South Africa's recognition and distinction. The most important area for Pinotage production is the one that coincides with South Africa's winemaking origins: the part of the Cape of Good Hope, whose latitude corresponds, on the other side of the Equator, to that of Tripoli.

The most widely grown white grape varieties in South Africa are Chenin Blanc, known locally as Steen, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.

Red grape varieties include, in addition to Pinotage, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah, which is called Shiraz in South Africa.