South Africa: Buitenverwachting Winery, 37 Klein Constantia Road, Cape Town
In Afrikaans “buitenverwachting” means “beyond expectations”, and this winery is trying to live up to its name, or even to exceed expectations. It’s part of the Constantia Wine Route (10 wineries are listed: http://constantiawineroute.com/about/).
Our family from the Cape have been to this winery a number of times, so on our last trip to South Africa we all decided we should too, as we were in the vicinity and we were trying to visit as many new (to us) wineries as we could.
We were only at Buitenverwachting for part of an afternoon, but long enough to see a bit of the estate and to do a wine tasting. Long enough to whet our appetite and know that we want to return. It’s another lovely winery, with great wines, a complex of gorgeous Cape Dutch buildings, and spectacular scenery.
Bit of history and back story:
Constantia is a large area just outside today’s main Cape Town metropolitan area, with farms, vineyards, restaurants and other attractions, including the 10 wineries on the Constantia Wine Route (mentioned above). Simon van der Stel founded Constantia in 1685, also known as Groot Constantia. He was the first governor of the new Dutch colony at the tip of Africa. He chose this particular valley, not only for its beauty but also for the decomposed granite soils on its slopes, gently cooled by ocean breezes. Here he built a house and used the land to produce wine (Constantia’s first wine farm, Groot Constantia), as well as other fruits and vegetables, and for cattle farming. After van der Stel’s death in 1712, the estate was broken up and sold in three parts: Groot Constantia, Klein Constantia and Bergvliet. Groot and Klein Constantia still exist today as lovely wineries.
In 1773 a 200-morgen sub-division (probably about 171 hectares or 422 acres) was sold to a Cornelis Brink and this became, in 1796, what we know as Buitenverwachting today. (A morgen was a unit of land measurement used by Netherlands, Germany and the Dutch colonies in those days).
It’s a beautiful farm on the east-facing slopes of the Constantia Berg (mountain), only about 12 km from False Bay. Sadly it changed hands rather frequently but still generally did well as a wine farm, partly because of the 90,000 vines planted in 1825 by Ryk Arnoldus Cloete, brother of Hendrik Cloete. Hendrik Cloete, the first winemaker of Groot Constantia, planted new vines to replace the old ones, thus improving the quality of wines from the estate.
The new estate, Buitenverwachting, had many ups and downs over the years until recently.
Richard and Christine Mueller bought this historic property in the 1980s, with a view to restoring its fortunes. Their team seem to have done a good job, as Buitenverwachting has helped to re-establish this area’s reputation for fine wine. The team is Lars Maack, Christine’s son and part-owner; Hermann Kirschbaum the cellar master; and winemaker Brad Paton. They restored the farm to its former glory and started planting selected cultivars. Their first grape harvest of 100 tonnes was the first in 30 years for the farm and they haven’t looked back.
Back to the present;
After you turn off the main road you drive for a little while through the vineyards and past fields, all with a wonderful view of the hills not far away. The first impression of the winery is of greenery and beautiful Cape Dutch buildings, the white gables standing out against the green.
Today, it has a restaurant, winetasting, and a coffee shop.
First, the wine tasting. The Tasting Room(s)are in the historic wine cellar, with its traditional thatched roof, white-washed walls, and yellowwood ceilings. The inside is casual, with a tasting bar, couches and small lounges. Or you can sit outside on the terrace, which we did as our party had two little people. Outside was perfect for them to play around on the huge lawn that has a magnificent 250-year-old Norfolk Pine tree.
The non-drivers of our party did the tasting at R60 for 5 wines (about $4), half of which was waived because we bought some wine too. All the wines were great, and we noticed that they are regularly rated very high by John Platter. The terrace is a great place to linger and chat, perhaps order a bottle of wine and a charcuterie plate.
The restaurant, in one of the original thatch buildings, has recently been renovated after a terrible storm in 2017. I’m told it is very good and serves a great menu based on locally-sourced ingredients. We didn’t sample it this time, but it’s on our to-do list next time we are in South Africa.
The coffee shop is called Coffee BloC, named for the coffee roastery, built in the traditional Cape style of architecture in the shape of a small square block. Besides excellent, fresh coffee they have a small breakfast menu and a selection of homemade pastries and cakes.
There’s also a gift shop called the Studio, with mostly rather high-end (but lovely) goodies as far as we could see.
Next year Rod is attending a conference in Cape Town and will run a small workshop. He’d like to bring the attendees here, so we’ll see. It’s that good, and very accessible from the city.
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