South Africa's wine history. From slavery to apartheid, and beyond.

Where Cape wine began

South Africa may be the only wine country that knows the exact date of its first wine: 2 February 1659, recorded by Jan van Riebeeck of the Dutch East India Company. The Cape was a vital stop for ships sailing between Europe and the East, and Company's Garden in Cape Town is said to be where the first vines were planted.

In 1685, commander Simon van der Stel founded Constantia beside Table Mountain. Its sweet wines became famous across the world, with admirers including Napoleon, Frederick the Great and George Washington, and they appear in Jane Austen and Dickens. Modern recreations of these sweet, heady wines are well worth seeking out.

The other side of the story

Winemaker Carmen Stevens, who becomes Peter's guide, explains that the first people the settlers met were the San, who relied on the fresh water around Table Mountain. When the Dutch channeled that water for their ships, the San were pushed inland. It was the start of a long history of dispossession. Slaves were brought from the East Indies, and today the Cape Coloured community, to which Carmen belongs, is the largest population group in the Western Cape.

At Weltevrede in Bonnievale, in the Robertson region, Philip Jonker takes Peter into century-old underground concrete fermentation tanks once lined with beeswax. He traces his family to Rosetta of Java, sold at a slave auction in 1702 to governor Willem Adriaen van der Stel. That was the year the governor was building his wine estate Vergelegen, so she may well have been one of the Cape's first vineyard workers.

Robben Island and a wine for Mandela

Peter crosses to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was held for 18 years. In the prison courtyard, Mandela once kept a small vegetable garden and even buried part of the manuscript of Long Walk to Freedom there. The garden is gone, but old vines remain.

Peter hears how those neglected vines were nursed back to fruit over seven years, harvested once in 2012, and turned into a sweet fortified wine called The Parable. The first bottle was given to Mandela for his 94th birthday. Only a dozen half bottles remain, and Peter gets to hold one. Find out what this wine, described as the sweet fruit of freedom, means to the family who made it.

Carmen Stevens: from Mills and Boon to winemaker

Carmen grew up under apartheid and remembers being turned away from restaurants. When she applied to study winemaking in 1991, she was refused, and refused again the following years, until political change made her claim impossible to ignore. Her love of wine began in an unexpected place: the romance novels her mother used to help her read through dyslexia. See how a single French word started it all.

Since 2011, the Carmen Stevens Foundation has grown from a soup kitchen for 300 children into a program providing breakfast and lunch to more than 25,000 learners every school day. Peter sees the stacks of food in her winery, from pilchards to samp, a staple dish Mandela himself enjoyed, and hears how much a proper meal changes a child's ability to learn.

Building a better future in Bonnievale

In Bonnievale, Augusta describes the problems the town has faced, from drugs to alcohol, and a community plan to stop children dropping out of school with career-focused, entrepreneurial education. Peter tries his hand at welding with the students, with mixed results, and takes a careful ride in their homemade go-kart.

The episode does not shy away from how divisive history and wine can be in South Africa. Watch to see why so many people here believe wine can still help build a more inclusive future.