What is Constantia Glen best known for?

Two red blends, in a valley everyone comes to for white. The flagship Five is built from all five red Bordeaux varieties; Three is the softer, Merlot-led one you open sooner. The whites are lovely and cool-climate — but it's the reds that landed the estate on collectors' lists.

Do you need to book a tasting at Constantia Glen?

Book. Especially on weekends and right through summer — roughly November to February — when the terrace and that view fill fast. Reserve on the estate's website, and if you can choose, take a table looking down the valley.

Is Constantia Glen good for a view?

It's the view. This may be the finest outlook from any tasting room in Constantia — the farm sits high at the head of the valley, and the terrace looks back down over the vines toward the mountains and, on a clear day, the sea beyond. Come as the light goes long.

What food does Constantia Glen serve?

Charcuterie boards and cheese platters, built to sit alongside the wine rather than a full restaurant menu — the long, grazing kind of lunch a Bordeaux blend and a wide horizon were made for. Check the current food offering on their site before you go.

Constantia Glen

Save this one for last. Work your way up through Constantia's grand old estates, then keep driving — past the last of them, up to where the road runs into the forested saddle below Constantia Nek, between Table Mountain and the Constantiaberg. That's where Constantia Glen sits: a family farm on the highest slopes in the valley, pouring two of the Cape's more serious reds from a terrace that looks back down over everything you just drove up.

That's the whole pitch, and it's a good one. Ageworthy Bordeaux reds from a corner of the Cape most people file under "white wine," served exactly where they were grown. Because it's at the far, quiet top of the valley, it's also the least rushed stop on any Constantia wine day — the terrace where the afternoon slows down.

Why the reds work up here

Height. That's the trick. The rest of Constantia earns its reputation on Sauvignon Blanc, and fairly — the vines sit close to two oceans and the sea air keeps them cool through high summer. Constantia Glen takes that cool-climate hand and raises it with altitude, farming some of the highest planted ground in the valley on steep, wind-raked slopes that ripen fruit slowly and hang onto acid.

Slow ripening is what lets a white-wine valley make convincing red. The long, cool season gives Cabernet and its cousins time to build structure without ever tipping into jam — savoury, tightly-wound wines that want a few years in the cellar rather than a warm afternoon on the deck.

Constantia grows some of the Cape's best Sauvignon Blanc. Constantia Glen quietly proves the same hillside can grow serious red.

A small farm that stays small

You can taste the focus. Instead of sprawling into a market-covering range, the estate keeps it deliberately tight: a short list of whites and the two red blends that carry its name, all off one high-lying property. Fewer wines, made with more attention — the opposite of a supermarket portfolio, and the reason the quality holds.

It's run as a genuine family concern. I've left the family name and the current cellar team to the notes below rather than state them here — ownership and winemaking credits are exactly the details that quietly shift, so confirm them on the estate's own site before you treat them as settled.

Five and Three

The naming couldn't be simpler, and it tells you almost everything. Both are Cape Bordeaux blends; the number is the count of grapes.

Five is the statement. All five red Bordeaux varieties — Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec — into a dense, classically-cut red with dark fruit and a streak of graphite, built to be laid down. It shows up year after year among South Africa's most highly rated red blends. This is the estate at full stretch, and the bottle to reach for if you want to understand what the hillside can do.

Three is the sibling you actually open on a Tuesday. A shorter, Merlot-led blend from the same family of grapes, rounder and more generous straight away — dinner tonight, not the cellar for a decade. Start here. It's the honest introduction to the house before you commit to a Five.

And don't skip the whites on your way through. The cool-climate Sauvignon Blanc is crisp and properly structured, and there's a Sauvignon-Sémillon blend in the white-Bordeaux mould — the freshening counterpoint to all that red, and a reminder of exactly where you're standing.

The visit

Here's the play. Book a seated tasting on the terrace, take a table facing down the valley, and let the afternoon stretch. Tastings are unhurried and built entirely around that view, and the kitchen leans into it — charcuterie boards and cheese platters made to graze alongside the wines rather than a full sit-down menu.

Time it as your finale. Because the farm crowns the valley, it's the natural last stop: start low among the historic estates, climb, and finish up here as the light goes long across the vines. One caution — weekends and the summer stretch, roughly November to February, fill this terrace fast, and the best tables are the ones looking down the valley. Book ahead, and check the current tasting and food details on the estate's site before you travel.

What to buy

One bottle home, make it the Five in a strong vintage — the estate's statement wine, and one that pays back patience in the cellar. Want to drink sooner, or meet the house for the first time? The Three is softer, friendlier and ready younger. And if the day was warm and the view did its work, take the Sauvignon Blanc — the valley in a glass, and proof that Constantia's most famous grape and its quietly ambitious reds come off the very same slope.