You don't get more historical than this. Groot Constantia is where it all began in the wine industry in South Africa. Granted to Dutch Governor Simon van der Stel in 1685, he laid out a larger vineyard than any before him at the Cape with almost 100,000 vines using cuttings from the Company Gardens in Cape Town and from the free farmers when they pruned their vines. It was left to later owners – mainly Hendrik Cloete - to take it to the heights of international acclaim it achieved in the early  19th century with the likes of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Baudelaire writing about