Napoleon's St. Helena Wine Has Renaissance in Cape Town Vineyards

Groot Constantia

Groot Constantia Trust

The sweet wine of Constantia helped Napoleon ease the misery of exile and 
was recommended by Jane Austen for a broken heart. Now, two CapeTown 
estates have revived the beverage that made South Africa the toast of Europe.

Klein Constantia was first to bring back Vin de Constance, using vines from the 
three-century-old plantings on the slopes behind Cape Town's signature 
Table Mountain. Neighbor Groot Constantia followed in recent years, 
producing its own version of the honeyed wine.

Vin de Constance is a late-harvested wine made from white Muscat de 
Frontignac grapes, golden in color, with a bouquet of stone fruits and a smooth
 finish. "It's a delightful and unusual wine for relatively early drinking 
that serves as a reminder of historic fashion," said London-based wine critic 
Jancis Robinson.

The South African wine also compares price-wise to its French and German 
rivals, costing about 300 rand ($43) at the cellar door for a 500 milliliter
 hand-blown, French glass bottle.

The original Constantia farm was granted in 1685 to Van der Stel, the first 
governor of the Dutch colony in the Cape. Constantia's wines reached the peak 
of their fame in the 18th and 19th centuries before the phylloxera beetle 
devastated the plantings in the 1880s.

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, according to Groot Constantia. 
The Count de las Cases reported that, on his deathbed, Napoleon refused 
everything offered to him but a glass of Constantia wine.

A rare bottle of 1821 Grand Constance sold for 2,990 pounds ($5,918) at a 
Sotheby's auction a year ago in London. The wine was also a favorite 
among the European and Russian royal households of the time, Sotheby's 
said. Jane Austen wrote in "Sense and Sensibility" of its "healing powers 
on a disappointed heart."

-- from an article by Clyde Russell for the Bloomberg News

Napoleon's 'sober' Empress Josephine had 13,000-bottle wine cellar

Napoleon's wife Josephine, once described by her chamber maid as a "sober woman", maintained a wine cellar with more than 13,000 bottles, a new exhibition has revealed.

By Henry Samuel in Paris

6:00AM GMT 19 Nov 2009

Far from a teetotaller, France's former empress had a vast cellar of top Grands Crus and wines from around the world – a collection into which dipped freely when entertaining guests at her extravagant dinner parties.

The entire inventory of her cellar, handwritten in 1814, is on display at a new exhibit which opened on Wednesday at her final residence, in the Paris suburb of Rueil-Malmaison, along with a host of 18th and 19th century bottles, crystal glasses and punch bowls.

"Until now we had very little information about what people were drinking at the time and the wine served," said Amaury Lefebure, the director of the National Museum of the Chateaux of Malmaison and Bois-Preau.

"This very precise inventory of Josephine's cellar, which includes a number of Grands Crus that still exist to our day, gives us a wonderful glimpse of what was served at the empress' table."

"We knew she was a good hostess, but this confirms that she possessed the best wines of her time."

The compilation of the inventory began days after Josephine's 1814 death – shortly after she organised a royal reception for Czar Alexander I.

The greatest surprise in the 13,286-bottle wine list was the clear predominance of bordeaux, as Parisian high society usually plumped for burgundies at the time.

"Under the ancient regime, the English were the greatest drinkers of bordeaux while Louis XVI didn't have a single bottle in his cellar. So we can say that Josephine launched the post-Napoleon fashion for Bordeaux in France," said Mr Lefebure.

Elegant champagne flutes inscribed with a J for Josephine or N for Napoleon and topped with a crown, feature in the exhibition. Josephine kept relatively few bottles of champagne – around 100 – as it was prone to explode due to the poor quality of glass at the time, according to the exhibition's curators.

But her tastes went much further afield, with wines from Cyprus, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal as well as South Africa and Hungary.

The empress also kept hundreds of bottles of rum from her native Martinique, which she would serve at dinner parties in punches kept in gilded bowls.

"We know from her head chambermaid that Josephine was a 'very sober woman,'" said Mr Lefebure. "She was partial to very sweet wines including champagne and also rum punches that drew on her Creole origin, but we know she drank it all with moderation – like Napoleon."

The emperor's favourites were burgundy and champagne, but he also grew fond of South African wines during his time in exile on Saint Helena, the South Atlantic island where he died in 1821 at age 52 – not far from Cape Town.

Sadly for wine historians, none of the actual bottles from the cellar are featured in the exhibit because all of Josephine's wine has long been consumed.

"La Cave de Josephine," runs through March 8 next year.

Napoleon's legacy

Dinner in Italy: The Historic Brotherhood of the Golden Sabre

Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 03:56PM

Storica Confraternita della Sciabola d’Oro

The Brotherhood of the Golden Sabre, better known in Italy as Storica Confraternita della Sciabola d’Oro, will be hosted by Bisol on Saturday, July 3 in the hills of Prosecco at the Relais Duca di Dolle - the official site for the induction of new Knights of the Brotherhood.

The dinner event will be an opportunity to learn the secrets of the noble and ancient art of sciabolatura (sabrage), and then if performed accordingly, be officially “Knighted” Sabreur Chevalier or  Maitre Sabreur, becoming a member of the prestigious Confrérie.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, members of the brotherhood are skilled at using their sabres to gallantly open a bottle of bubbly. This tradition dates back to the Napoleonic Era, when victorious members of Napoleon’s military preferred to slice off the head of the champagne bottle - cork and all, instead of removing the foil and wire basket.

Today the tradition is performed at important events with distinguished and honorable guests.

Executing the art of sabrage properly and with any style clearly requires practice; as many things can go disastrously wrong when the saber’s fine edge swiftly meets the seam of the glass annulus at the top of the bottle. An art best left to the members of the brotherhood, which currently has over 35,000 members worldwide.