Commenting on the reclamation of the Constantia Valley by baboons, a reader, Tom Robbins, recalls a Cape Times headline: “Baboons come down to Newlands to look for wives.” This spring, a troop carried out a well coordinated farm invasion of the River Café at Constantia Uitsig, commandeering the kitchen to the consternation of the ladies who lunch. Anchovy toast (low GI) and china cups full of hot water were temporarily off the menu.
Indigenous baboon grapes @ Klein Constantia
Klein Constantia seigneur Lowell Jooste is furious that the new thatch of his 1823 manor house (the Cape Dutch gable lies “1686”) is being mischievously unpicked by baboons whose pranks have also demolished masonry on the eves. “We’ll have to cover the whole roof with chicken wire.” After 25 years living in the historic house, Lowell has been chased further into Newlands by bad school traffic and man’s hairy neighbours from Charles Darwin’s evolutionary tree. “Constantia baboons now come with minders to make sure we don’t shoot them – even with a catapult – but the minders are more interested in what we’re up to on the farm than what the baboons are doing.”
The house at Klein Constantia, built for Johan Gerhard Cloete shortly after Klein Constantia was deducted from Groot Constantia, now stands empty. A shame as a century ago it was the nexus of the Great Gatsby lifestyle of Pittsburg heiress Clara Hussey who lived there in some considerable style with her husband, a milliner from Paarl, Abraham Lochner de Villiers.
Abe’s shop was called La Mode and as the Klein Constantia website remembers “Clara threw parties which were the talk of Cape Town, where Russian caviar was served, swathed in barrels of ice, together with oysters and smoked salmon; orchestras played, and peacocks strolled on the lawns.” The parties are evoked by lavish murals in the wine cellar, last used to make wine in 1937.
While today’s parties may be less glamorous, there has been no drop in wine quality. In fact Klein Constantia is celebrating its best vintage of the decade with Platter five star accolades for a trio of wines: single vineyard Perdeblokke Sauvignon Blanc 2009, Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 and Vin de Constance 2006.
A sneak preview of the 2009 VdC, currently resting in 500 litre barrels of Hungarian oak which will only be bottled in 2013, confirms that Platter publisher Andrew McDowell will have to either recalibrate his guide or extend the star scale. Which must give Lowell a warm feeling as already he sells 13 000 bottles of the stuff to the UK at £30 each (“too cheap”) with an undisputed international icon status secured for the brand.
Lowell owns a serious collection of 18th and 19th century Constantia bottles, although one broke recently. Prompting a plan to implement a solera system so that every bottle produced has at least one molecule of the wine enjoyed by Jane Austen and Baudelaire. We’ll leave that other Vin de Constance aficionado, Napoleon, out of this as winemaker Adam Mason speculates that the farm’s Jack Russell Chico could be the reincarnation of the Corsican corporal, so fearless is he. In fact Chico is the last line of defense against marauding baboons.
