Here's some more of our history

1957:      T8128 17.6.1957 68 morgen 6712 sq.ft

                   From: Gilbert Norrie Grant

                   To: Joy Dorothea Bennett (born Coates 21.2.1912)

                   Formally Heesom

 

 

2000:      From: Joy Dorothea Bennett (Formally Heesom)

                   To: Rymer

 

Rymer

Originally from the Transvaal and was involved in Banking. He purchased neighboring farms and build the current wine cellar and conference facilities on the silvermyn land. He also started with the restoration of the old Herenhuis on Zorgvliet.  He planted 40ha of vineyard on the fruit farm of 86ha.

2002:      From: Rymer

                   To: Johannes van der Merwe

 

Johannes van der Merwe

Zorgvliet, the centuries old wine estate outside Stellebosch, was yesterday sold by public auction to Johannes van der Merwe for R31 Million.

The estate comprises three prime properties: Le Pommier, and 80 seater restaurant; Zorgvliet itself, which comprises a three-storey office and technical centre, with wine cellars and a manor house dating back to 1860; Spring grove, a family home and winery.

 

The estate of 86ha has 40ha under vines and its plantings include Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc and Merlot grapes.  Van der Merwe, who is believed to have stake in the Presidents Steyn gold mine and a game farm in the Vaalwater, signed a cheque for the R3.1 Million deposit at the fall of the hammer. He said he had bid against dollars and pounds and was pleased that such assets could remain in South African hands.  He hoped to do a responsible job to build up the business, he said.  He was full of praise for former owner Peter Rhymer, who had built up the business when he changed from fruit farming and who left considerable infrastructure.  Van der Merwe would concentrate on the niche sector for exclusive quality wines in the export market and continue Rymers work.  Johannes van der Merwe completed restoration of Herenhuis and transformed it into a work of beauty. Also had great success in making Zorgvliet a wine farm with the highest quality of wines.

 

The Silver Myn Story

Although not sure when the first vines were planted on Zorgvliet the present day Chapel was indicated as the wine cellar in the opgaaf of Johannes Muller in 1732, he also left some 12 leagers of wine.

One of the farms making up the present day Zorgvliet Wine Estate has been named after a dubious mining project; Silver Myn has also been adopted as the niche label (Silver Myn) for unconventional products such as Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc, Pinot Noir and Viognier.

For the Dutch East India Company, whose interests were mercantile rather than colonial, it was important to exploit whatever resources it had to offer. Simon van der Stel made his famous expedition to Namaqualand in search of copper in 1685. Attempts to find silver met with less success so there was great excitement in 1740 when Frans Diederik Muller claimed to have discovered silver at the Simonsberg. By 1743 Muller had persuaded the authorities to grant him mining rights. With the backing of a reputable businessman, Olaf de Wet a company the Octroojeerde Society der Mynwerken aan de Simonsberg was formed. Muller was appointed Bergmeester (master miner) and work began in 1743 with Company soldiers, sailors and some slaves. Long tunnels were built into the side of the mountain at two levels and shafts of 50-100 feet deep were sunk to connect them. For five years Muller continued to demand more labor and funds in order to extract the rich deposits that lay ahead – with promise of silver, later copper and even gold! Eventually the Directors became suspicious and sent a sample of ore to Amsterdam for analyses. Muller was exposed and banished to Batavia. Mining seized but the mine remains intact.

 Embarrassed, the authorities abandoned the silver mine but the site remains intact.   Close by on the farm Goede Hoop, are ruins of a number of structures that might have been part of the mining operation.

Was this a hoax, the first white collar crime in South Africa or are there silver and gold deposits to be found in the belly of the Simonsberg?

 

 

 

 

Banhoek story

It is perhaps not surprising that a place such as The Banhoek Valley should have its own mysteries. The valley has deep historical association with now only Holland and France, but with Britain and Germany and in more recent times, with the United States, particularly California.

 

The original small nomadic Hottentots population had withdrawn into the northern mountains when the White man came to live in the valley; the pastoralist Black tribes, moving south down Africa, were still far away; and the Colored peoples of mixed blood, who were later to contribute so much to the development of Cape agriculture, had not yet evolved in great numbers.  The valley was, in face, a cradle for White and the generations who settled and lived there down the years were in an important way molded in character by their spectacular surroundings and by the rhythm of the growing seasons.

 

The valley is not all the domain of men.  It is still the home of the steppe buzzard, brown with grey mottle, a migrant from Siberia; the local black eagle which nests in the high mountain kloofs; the dwarf hoepoe’ the kiewiet, or crowned plover which lays it’s eggs in the orchards; the grey and the Cape francolin; quail; the long-tailed sugar bird and the malachite sunbird.  An occasional fish eagle is seen over the rivers and his haunting raucous cry is an often necessary reminder that the valley is in Africa.  The magnificent giant kingfisher, the yellow-billed duck ad the black duck also live here.  Proteas dominate the indigenous growth on the mountain slope and include the creamy-white and rarest colored sugar bush, and, in one area, the blushing bride.  Here and there among the big proteas are the waboom or wagon trees, so called because their exceptionally hard wood was used for brake blocks, and the sledges on which the early pioneers of the Great Trek pulled their wagons – wheels removed – over the mountains of the interior.  Also prominent is red Erica heath, one of the 602 varieties of heath found in South Africa.

 

Wine has been a product of the Valley since the first white man settled there.  Vine cuttings were sent to the first commander of the Cape, Jan van Riebeeck, from Germany’s Rhineland in 1654 but arrived rotten.  Another batch, sent in the following year, proved to be the root and foundation of the wine industry.  The first wine was produced on February 2, 1659 and Van Riebeeck wrote joyously in his diary: Today, praise be the Lord, wine was made for the first time from Cape grapes.