"Today, praise be to God, wine was pressed for the first time from Cape grapes," Jan van Riebeeck wrote in his diary on 2 February 1659; the town of Stellenbosch followed twenty years later, in 1679. Nearby Constantia's sweet wine became one of the eighteenth century's most celebrated — Napoleon had it shipped to his exile on Saint Helena.
The twentieth century closed the door: the KWV cooperative regulated production for decades, and sanctions isolated the Cape. Since 1994 the reopening has transformed Stellenbosch — a university town ringed by granite mountains, where a new generation works Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah alongside old-vine Chenin Blanc and Pinotage, the country's own crossing.