Because of Groot Constantia's size and the fact that the property and its museums, restaurants and other public activities and facilities make it one of the Cape's major tourist attractions, there is a perception that wine is just churned out here.
'We actually make less wine than many of the other privately owned farms in the Constantia Valley.'
The Gouverneurs Reserve Bordeaux-style red blend remains the flagship, drawing on the best grapes and made in market-friendly quantities. Boela Gerber recently introduced a partner for it: the new barrel-fermented Gouverneurs Reserve White, a sémillon/sauvignon blanc blend in the Graves tradition selected for the 2011 CWG Auction.
Despite having initially made his mark with Groot Constantia's merlot, Boela has been quietly focussing on shiraz of late. He’s experimenting with large open-topped 500-litre barrel fermenters, manual punch-downs, and new plantings on higher sites.
'This is cool-climate shiraz, more northern-Rhône in style, a different animal to what’s being made in the warmer wine-growing regions.'
Boela didn't grow up with wine. 'My parents were never big wine drinkers. Until a few years ago, when my mom's doctor, upon hearing that her son was a winemaker, advised her to simply start drinking a glass of red wine a day for its health properties. Which she now does... well, not quite every day, but most days, as the mood takes her. And my dad now has a thing about sauvignon blanc; he's always on the lookout for a different one.'
And then there's a little piece of vinous history that appealed to all three, the winemaker, scientist, and art lover in Boela Gerber. Upon his arrival at Groot Constantia on the eve of the 2001 harvest, he was charged with re-creating the famous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Constantia sweet wines that had been sipped by the likes of Napoleon, Jane Austen, and Baudelaire.
After a couple of vintages of trial and error, involving much historical research, lab work, and experiments with picking times and fermenting techniques, the first successful natural sweet Grand Constance, made from partly sun-dried grapes from the block of muscat de frontignan below the manor house, was bottled in 2003. The wine remained a work in progress, with the odd vintage skipped as refinements continued over the years.
'Now it's made like a red wine, fermented on the skins in barrels, but handled very oxidatively (exposing it to air at an early stage), so it keeps in the bottle.'
He gets to savour it sometimes, with friends, after a long summer's lunch on his lawn under one of Groot Constantia's massive camphor trees.
Grilled sole with hollandaise sauce recipe by Boela Gerber served with lemon wedges and a green salad paired with Groot Constantia Chardonna...
Veal casserole, also known as blanquette de veau recipe by Boela Gerber paired with Groot Constantia Shiraz....