South Africa’s Most Historic Wine Is Hiding in Plain Sight

Exiled on St. Helena in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, Napoleon Bonaparte had little to comfort him, one can imagine, except a daily bottle of his favorite wine: Constantia Wyn. Reportedly, the disgraced emperor even requested a glass of the South African dessert wine—rather than a French Bordeaux or Champagne—on his deathbed.

Le Petit Caporal wasn’t the only one with a sweet tooth. Beloved by George Washington, Marie Antoinette, Charles Dickens, and other movers and shakers from the history books, Constantia Wyn (Afrikaans for wine from Constantia) enchanted the world’s elite for the better part of the 18th and 19th centuries. In Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen praises its healing powers “on a disappointed heart” as well as for gout.

The oldest wine region in the Southern Hemisphere and its bottled legacy are exciting palates all over again.

Now, hundreds of years later, the oldest wine region in the Southern Hemisphere and its bottled legacy are exciting palates all over again, thanks to an unlikely revival, a determined businessman, and a serious wine nerd. But before any other spoilers, you have to return to the start of the story.

Located in the southern suburbs of Cape Town, Constantia—the cradle of winemaking in South Africa—dates back to 1685, after the Dutch East India Company granted Simon van der Stel, the first governor of the Dutch Cape Colony, nearly 2,000 acres for “good and faithful services.” There, he built a model farm, including thousands of grape vines that turned into a financial boon. (The original property has since split into three sections: Klein Constantia, Groot Constantia, and Buitenverwachting.)

Van der Stel’s coveted sweet wines, which could withstand overseas journeys due to their high sugar content and potential fortification, sold for exorbitant prices across Europe and North America. “There were some complaints that van der Stel spent too much time on Constantia and not enough time running the Cape Colony,” says Boela Gerber, former winemaker at Groot Constantia, who currently heads the winery at Southwest Mountains Vineyards in Virginia.

Constantia Wyn nearly vanished in the mid-19th century due to an outbreak of Oidium tuckeri (a mildew vine disease), labor shortages, trade restraints, and changing tastes. A devastating phylloxera epidemic in the late 1800s became the proverbial nail in the cask, although batches of non-commercial sweet wines continued to be made in small quantities.

By the time Duggie Jooste, a Cape Town businessman with experience in the wine industry, bought Klein Constantia from family friend Ian Austin in 1980, few people had even heard of the mythical Constantia Wyn—and it showed. “The grass on the lawn was about four-foot high and used for fattening cattle,” recalls Duggie’s son, Lowell Jooste, who helped run the business before relocating to La Jolla, California, where he started LJ Crafted Wines. “I remember Ian saying he just wanted to get the hell out of the place. They discussed it one night at the supper table, wrote up a deed, and signed it right there.”

Underneath the tangled, untamed bush, Jooste recognized the latent potential of the land’s fertile, alluvial and granite soil. Constantia had once produced some of the world’s greatest wine, after all. Why couldn’t he do it again? He just needed a team. While growing international grapes like Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon, Jooste and his winemaker, Ross Gower, found Chris Orffer, a renowned professor of viticulture at Stellenbosch University who had quietly been attempting to recreate Constantia Wyn at neighboring Groot Constantia. “We kept it a complete secret until the wine was ready,” says Lowell. “If it didn’t work, we didn’t want it to be seen as a failure. If it did work, we wanted to be far ahead of the competition.”

A specialist in ampelography (the study of grapevines), Orffer landed on white Muscat de Frontignan, with the help of old ledgers and diaries, as the most likely grape. He planted a clone using material thought to be from the original Constantia vineyard. “There’s no definite knowledge as to which cultivars would’ve been used for the sweet wine of Constantia,” says Matthew Day, current winemaker at Klein Constantia. “But if you break it down, Muscat de Frontignan would’ve been used for its ability to raisin out on the vine. It’s not a Botrytis wine. It’s a wine made from multiple pickings throughout the season.”

At the beginning in 1990, Klein Constantia produced only a couple barrels of what they labeled Vin de Constance. In South Africa at least, the sweet wine had truly been forgotten. “They thought we were crazy,” says Lowell. But in France—where Constantia had charmed Napoleon, Charles Baudelaire, Louis XVI, and so many others—people remembered the wine. After a couple of years, the legendary Vin de Constance landed on the most exclusive tables in Paris, including the Four Seasons Hotel George V.

As Jooste suspected, other producers in the region were making their own versions. After experimenting with various varieties and bottlings throughout the 20th century, Groot Constantia codified a rendition called Grand Constance, a mixture of white and red Muscat de Frontignan, in 2001. “They both claim to make the wine that Napoleon drank,” says Matthew Sterne, founder of Natural Wanders and The Constantia Wine Walk, which grants access to private vineyard trails. “But they make very different wines. They’re a bit like stepbrothers with a shared history.”

Luscious yet clean, Klein Constantia’s Vin de Constance has earned ample acclaim, as has Groot Constantia’s more traditional dessert wine—but which of the two is more accurate? Occasionally, both the Klein and Groot Constantia teams managed to buy vintage Constantia Wyn bottles at auction to lineup their brand with the maiden recipe. Still, experts say it’s impossible to really know. “There was no consistency in style,” says Gerber, who created Grand Constance. “Those were the pioneering days of winemaking. There are some journals. We just stitched those together and filled in the gaps with imagination.”

Even today, Vin de Constance continues to evolve. “The big focus that we’ve had in the last 10 years is to see how we can freshen it up and make it less perceivably sweet,” says Day, who counts Sandrine Garbay of Sauternes, Château Guiraud as a mentor. To that end, Klein Constantia has started fermenting Vin de Constance on the skins and introduced a new blending process during fermentation.

While Constantia as a region increasingly earns acclaim for its excellent Sauvignon Blanc, the romanticism and intrigue of Constantia Wyn endures. “Groot Constantia exported sweet wine to Delaware before the Declaration of Independence,” says Gerber. “We are very proud of our history, and these stories can remind people in Cape Town that there is a centuries-old wine region on your doorstep.”