There’s nothing small about Klein Constantia
When a business commissions a book about itself, the objective is usually selfserving. In the 1950s and 1960s the great mining houses contracted Paddy Cartwright to record their history. The books which followed were historically accurate, though the omissions were sometimes more important than what finally appeared in print.
This is not necessarily true when wine estates publish splendidly illustrated coffeetable books: here the history, as well as the kind of details which would otherwise never be available to wine aficionados, acquire an appropriate platform.
I have wonderful volumes about Chateaux D’Yquem, Lafite and Pichon Comtesse, as well as Meerlust, Rustenberg, Nederburg and Bollinger, to name but a few.
All contain useful information about the property and its past. Everything from illustrations from the estate’s archives to the records of what was planted centuries ago, how the wines were made, to whom they were sold, how and for how much they were traded, adds to our knowledge. You cannot properly understand the present without something of a dive into the past.
A book about Klein Constantia, home of Vin de Constance, written by Joanne Gibson and Malu Lambert (and for which I have contributed the foreword), perfectly reflects the value of such an enterprise. There were ample records from the 18th and early 19th centuries when Constantia was probably the most sought-after wine in the world. Assembling the details while retaining the evocative nature of the place and its history, has been the real achievement of the authors and the book designer.
I’ve been lucky enough to have sampled many bottles from Constantia’s glorious past. Almost all of them were simply extraordinary, as much a tribute to their provenance as to the value of sugar as a preservative. These survivors came from cellars in the northern hemisphere, where they aged so gently that in time they became timeless. Opening such a bottle is an occasion in itself: the ritual and ceremony adds to the experience. It says something about the wine that, despite the pressure of the moment, it does not disappoint.
The modern era of Vin de Constance dates back to 1986 and already the remaining bottles from that vintage fetch prices which suggest they will come to enjoy a stature akin to the great 18th century wines. In my view the most recent releases are even better: more sumptuous, better balanced, multi-layered, nuanced, complex. The few thousand bottles which are offered for sale overseas every year do for Cape wine what Table Mountain does for Cape tourism.
The Constantia book is not the only recent publication commissioned by a producer and distributed through the book trade. Harvest Table, an anthology of recipes but also a statement about how the cuisine of a region perfectly reflects the wines produced in it, has been funded by the French Oddo family to promote the wines of their not inconsiderable domaines.
Their South African properties are (for the moment) Taaibosch (formerly Cordoba), Pink Valley (Provençal-style rosé) and Le Chant. The former is very much the flagship of their southern hemisphere portfolio. Its cellarmaster — Schalk-Willem Joubert (whose stint at Rupert and Rothschild did much to launch that very successful operation) — is something of a wine industry icon in his own right.
Pink Valley, whose superpale rosé has many consumers wondering where the “pink” is, focuses solely on classically styled southern French rosé. Le Chant, the newcomer with vineyards along Stellenbosch’s Polkadraai hills, plays to a broader market than either of the other two brands.
Since the Oddo family owns properties in Provence, Sancerre, Rioja and Sicily, the culinary journey the book covers is extensive. It is unified by a largely (though not exclusively) Mediterranean feel, thoughtful and very generous illustrations, but mainly by the slightly too invisible presence of chef Monché Muller, who assembled the recipes. If you’re looking for how to prepare Umngqusho ne Nyama Ebomvu (braised oxtail with parmesanbraised rice) or the secret of a traditional bouillabaisse, this is the book you’ll reach for first.