Picnics at Delta Solms

At the end of the woodland at Solms Delta winery and museum, the Berg River runs over its brown stones in dappled sunshine creating an ideal picnic area. In the glade between the river and the dam. When I visited, Delta can cope with supplying picnics for up to ten parties in the summer months, an ideal spot to relax and unwind with friends and family. 

www.solms-delta.co.za

In the 1850’s the group of small farms that included Paulina's Dal suffered two major convulsions, first when it was sold to Daniel Jacobus Du Toit and later, when du Toit sold a portion of the property and created what became Rickety Bridge out of what land he retained. This Du Toit could trace his ancestry back through his mother Anna Margarita de Villiers to David, a brother of Paulina’s father and a grandson of Jacques de Villiers. 

Leading up to 1850 the wine industry had taken a knock and was heading for depression.

In 1840 the exports had been   465 773 gallons

In 1850 they were reduced to  246 132 gallons

By 1853 this was down to       182 322 gallons

In that year a consignment to England lost its owners £3000 and on a similar consignment to Madagascar, £4000.

However, at that point, the local industry received a boost when the powdery mildew, Oidium Tucheri, devastated the vineyards of Europe, lifting the price of a leaguer of Cape wine, roughly 120 gallons, from 67 to 82 Rix dollars.

It may be that this created one of those sudden surges in an economic sector for which South Africa is famous and convinced people, like D. J. du Toit, that the wine industry was ripe for investment.

Whatever the reason, du Toit bought the farms, including Paulina's Dal for £1125 in 1853, taking a mortgage bond from Albertus Jacob de Villiers for £500,

Du Toit also took a mortgage on the properties from Paulina’s father, Paul, for £1000, presumably to finance a replanting and expansion. It meant Du Toit's mortgage on  the property now stood at £1500 when its market value, set by his own purchase, was only £1125, and the scene was set for his insolvency.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books

Rickety Bridge - Going back to 1830. In that year the farm was owned by Catharina, the widow Pepler, and when her son married Catharina's second cousin, the twenty year old Paulina de Villiers, Catharina installed them in the newly built manor house with its built in wall cabinet that still graces the ‘voorkamer’ in thee picture.

The marriage was a family affair and Paulina and the Peplers could both trace ancestry back to Jacques de Villiers, one of the three original immigrant Huguenot brothers. Palina had two children and enjoyed the manor house for only six years before dying at her father's farm.

What was Paulina like? 

No pictures have come to light. Since she died in 1836 at the age of twenty six, one assumes she was not particularly robust and a picture of a frail beauty comes to mind. Paulina did have two children however, so frailty seems inappropriate.

Her death certificate records only that she died at Groot Drakenstein but the law required it to be signed by ‘a close relative, who had been present at, or near the persons death or, in the absence of such, by the person who shall have chief charge of the house in, or of the place on which, the death took place’.

It is Paulina’s father, Paul, who signed the certificate bu t it makes no mention of whether she was thrown from a horse, or if she had gone to her mother to be nursed.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books

My research into Rickety Bridge and the state of the South African wine industry uncovered the unscrupulous dealings in all kinds of rot gut during the Napoleonic wars, which almost finished that industry when Napoleon was defeated and French wine became available in Britain. One must remember that soldiering often exposed soldiers to water of doubtful quality and, those who could afford it drank wine, even rot gut in preference to what could be scooped out of the open sewers that were rivers in those days. The result was that South African wine, quite deservedly gained a reputation fr being undrinkable except 'in extremis' and the farmers, like the Pepplers at what would become Rickety Bridge, were forced to turn turn to alternative crops - like milk and pork.
The picture is of the Rickety Bridge the winery is now named after.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books

Rickety Bridge sits near Franschhoek, the area of the Cape Colony set aside by the Dutch to accommodate the immigrant Huguenots, when Franch rescinded the Treaty of Nantes, which had given the protestant Huguenots the right to worship in their own way. In the opening years of the nineteenth century, a family called Peppler amalgamated their wine farm holdings into one unit called simply 'A piece of ground', part of which was to become Rickety Bridge.

For the Pepplers, it was a judicious move. At that time, in Europe, wine had reached the stage of a necessity. The water in rivers stank with raw sewerage and the growing industrial waste, (falling into the Thames was a death sentence, not because few people could swim, but from swallowing the stinking poisoned water).

Napoleon had closed the ports to export to anywhere British. Britain had added to the blockade the sanction of high import tariff - with a preferential one for South Africa. The supply of French and continental wine had, through all this, shrunk to what could be smuggled or slipped past the blockade by the Americans or other neutrals, and sales of South African wine boomed on a worldwide basis. At the turn of the century the price had been 60 Rix dollars for a 160 gallon leaguer, but, by Waterloo in 1815, it had risen as high as 180 Rix dollars for good wine, a threefold increase.  

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books

I see the old farm at Hooggelegen has a web site and there is a Signal Gun Winery. I must investigate further and find if the young Garagiste de Wit has graduated to a wine master. I'd like to think so, they were such a great family to interview. IT seems unlikely that the conservation corridor has been established as I understand there is a great deal of house building going on in the ares but the slope of of Kanonkop is steep and just maybe! Next to the tractor museum there was a row of shops and in one was the office of a firm of pipe organ makers, at that time run by the third generation of organ makers the third generation of organ builders. Their organs are in Windhoek, Buenos Aires, Vienna and Kiev as well as spread along the Cape Coast all individually designed like pieces of architecture. From this you will appreciate the grapes were not the only rich pickings from Hooggelegen

www.sullatoberdalton.com

www.signalgun.com