Africa report
South Africa: Constance wine, the most French of South African wines
Audio 02:20
In a cellar at the Klein Constantia estate in South Africa, which houses bottles of Constantia wine.
© Heiko von Finte, 2018
By: Romain Chanson Follow
1 min
In South Africa, a wine estate reproduces a wine that has accompanied the history of France.
Louis XVI in Versailles or even Napoleon exiled on the island of Sainte-Hélène had, in their cellars, the wine of Constance, celebrated in a poem by Charles Baudelaire.
A drink from the Cape vineyards and exported by the Compagnie des Indes, whose ships sailed up the Atlantic coast of the African continent to Europe.
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After having disappeared, the wine of Constance has regained its letters of nobility in the form of a soft, naturally sweet wine, as Napoleon liked it when he would have asked for it on his deathbed.
Relaunched in the 1990s, the wine of Constance rubs shoulders with the great sweet wines of the world.
It is above all the most French of South African wines.
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South Africa
consumption