South Africa History

Many people think it that it was the French Hugenots who started the wine industry in South Africa, but in fact it was the Dutch. The first Govenor of the Cape, Jan Van Riebeeck had the vision to import the first vines from France and Germany in 1655 and planted them in what is known today as the Company Gardens.

Four years later on 2 February 1659, it can be seen in Van Riebeeck’s diaries “Today, praise be to God, wine was pressed for the first time from Cape grapes….” From this modest beginning viticulture slowly expanded, but it wasn’t until the arrival of Simon Van Der Stel that the quality of Cape wine began to emerge.

Simon Van der Stel encouraged the cape farmers to produce better wines by pressing grapes only when fully ripe, improving cleanliness during wine making and by fining the wine. To say thank you to Simon Van der Stel for his enormous contribution to the wine industry, he was granted a farm in the Constantia Valley which today is known as Groot Constantia. For nearly 2 centuries Constantia wines were highly sought after by European kings and statesmen and the Cape enjoyed a flourishing wine industry.

The wine industry took a turn in the 1880’s when the root louse Phylloxera devastated the vineyards and millions of vines were destroyed. The only way to save the vineyards was to graft the vines onto American rootstock (a practice still carried out today in South Africa and other countries). The wine industry suffered dramatically from the Phylloxera and in 1905 they started to look at a co-operative system in order to turn it around. It was in 1918, with the formation of KWV (Kooperatiewe Wijnbouwers Vereengiging van Zuid-Afrika – or Co-operative Wine Growers Association of South Africa), when things started to turn around in a positive direction. Their success was due to their 3 main functions,
• Introducing pricing guidelines
• Exporting of wines under the KWV label
• Providing services to the wine industry (education, consulting on viticultural practices, a magazine e.t.c)

In 1925 Professor Perold successfully cross-pollinated Pinot Noir with Hermitage (today known as Cinsaut), to make Pinotage. Apart from a few recent plantings in New Zealand and California, it is largely known as a South African grape variety. www.pinotage.co.za