Boschendal 5.16

4.5 star(s) from 96 votes
Outskirts of Pniel, between Stellenbosch and Franchhoek
Franschhoek, 7690
South Africa

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Boschendal is one of the oldest wine estates in South Africa and is located between Franschhoek and Stellenbosch in South Africa's Western Cape.Huguenot OriginsThe farm's title deeds are dated 1685. The estate's first owner, Jean le Long, was one of the party of 200 French Huguenot refugees who were fleeing religious persecution in Europe. He was granted land in the Cape of Good Hope by the Dutch East India Company in 1688 and the title deed was written in 1713. In 1715 the farm was acquired by another Huguenot, Abraham de Villiers who sold it to his brother Jacques in 1717. The De Villiers family farmed Boschendal until 1879. In 1812 Paul de Villiers and his wife, Anna Susanna Louw, completed a new house at Boschendal on the site of his father's home. This is the homestead as restored today. Among the guests in the later years of the De Villiers era was the British Governor at the Cape, Sir George Grey, who stayed at Boschendal whenever he visited the region.Rhodes Fruit Farms and Anglo AmericanIn 1887 the estate was bought by Cecil Rhodes and formed part of his commercial fruit business, Rhodes Fruit Farms which has become today's Boschendal Farm.Phylloxera EpidemicA global phylloxera epidemic, caused by tiny, sap-sucking insects, spread through the Cape vineyards in the 1880s and 1890s, destroying the vines of the Boschendal area in 1890. It caused much damage and led to a farming depression before resistant American vine stocks were introduced on a scale wide enough to stop the epidemic.

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