Klein Constantia - Constantia Wine

Constantia Wine

It was under the Cloete family ownership that Constantia's sweet dessert wine made primarily from vine-dried Muscat de Frontignan grapes reached the height of its fame. Napoleon Bonaparte had as much as 1,126 liters (297 gallons) of Constantia wine shipped in wooden casks each year to Longwood House, his home in exile on St Helena from 1815 until his death in 1821. The Count de las Cases reported that, on his deathbed, Napoleon refused everything offered to him but a glass of Constantia wine.

In Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen's character Mrs Jennings recommends a little Constantia for "its healing powers on a disappointed heart".

In Charles Dickens' last (and unfinished) novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Constantia wine is served to the reverend Septimus by his mother. "As, whenever the Reverend Septimus fell a-musing, his good mother took it to be an infallible sign that he ‘wanted support,’ the blooming old lady made all haste to the dining-room closet, to produce from it the support embodied in a glass of Constantia and a home-made biscuit."

In Charles Baudelaire's ( Les fleurs du mal) poem XXVI entitled sed non satiata Baudelaire compares the charms of his beloved to the pleasures of the night and Constantia wine: “Even more than Constantia, than opium, than Nuits, I prefer the elixer of your mouth, where love performs its slow dance.”