Constantia
About 20 kilometres south of the City Bowl, the Constantia valley opens into a landscape of oak-lined lanes, vine rows climbing toward the back of Table Mountain, and manor houses that have been standing since the late seventeenth century. The oldest of them, Groot Constantia, was built by a Dutch colonial governor who received 891 morgen of land in 1685 and set about making wine that would eventually reach the tables of European courts.
Today the estate still pours tastings daily, the cellar still carries the name of the Cloete family who saved it from ruin in 1778, and the mountain road over Constantia Nek — the first of its kind built in South Africa — still connects the valley to Hout Bay on the other side. The history here is layered and not always comfortable, which is part of why it rewards a slow visit.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to book a picnic at Groot Constantia well ahead — 24 hours minimum, and they mean it. Regulars also make a point of walking to the Klein Constantia kramat, the grave of Sheik Abdurachman Matebe Shah, which sits quietly on the estate and is easy to miss if you only follow the wine-tasting signs.
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How Constantia came to be
On 13 July 1685, VOC Commissioner Hendrik Adriaan van Reede tot Drakenstein granted Simon van der Stel a tract of land covering more than 2,000 hectares — far larger than the standard colonial allotment. Van der Stel named the estate Constantia, most likely after the daughter of a senior VOC official, and by 1692 had built a country house and begun farming cattle, fruit, and wine. The wines gained a reputation well beyond the Cape Colony, but after Van der Stel's death in 1712 the land was divided into three parts: Groot Constantia, Klein Constantia, and Bergvliet.
By the time Hendrik Cloete bought Groot Constantia in 1778, the vines were mostly dead. He and his neighbour Johannes Colyn restored the manor house and replanted on a large scale. A fire gutted the homestead in December 1925, leaving only the walls; architect F.K. Kendall rebuilt it to its 1793 appearance, and it was declared a National Monument in 1984. A darker chapter: in 1961 the area was declared a White Group Area under the Group Areas Act, and residents classified as coloured or black were forcibly removed to the Cape Flats. A plaque remembering the Strawberry Lane community was unveiled on Heritage Day 2009, and in 2012 the Solomon family received their Constantia property back following a successful land claim.
Who and what shaped it
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When to go
Constantia follows a Mediterranean pattern: dry, warm summers from November through March, and cool, wet winters from June through August when the mountain behind the valley can disappear into low cloud for days at a time. Spring and autumn bring the clearest light and the most comfortable temperatures for walking the estate.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.