Laborie Wine Farm

About Winery and Wines

Simon van der Stel sent Abraham Gabbema inland from the Cape in Oct 1659 on an expedition of trade with the interior. They made their first camp next to a river and below a majestic mountain, and it was after a rainstorm looking up, he saw the granite outcrops on the mountain glistening and called them "de Diamondt en de Peerlberg" (Diamond and Pearl Mountain). Thus Paarl (or Pearl) came to be. In the seventeenth century, the Tailleferts were a prosperous family in the district of La Bri, in the Poitou-Charentes area of France. Three years after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, this French Huguenot family boarded the Dutch East India Company's ship, Oosterland, bound for the Cape. This farm was granted to Isaac Taillefert in 1691, which he placed in his son Jean's name. He already owned the neighbouring Picardie. The land in those days stretched from the Paarl Mountain all the way to the Berg River. They set about clearing the bush and planting vines, which was no easy task. But within seven years, they were making a drinkable wine. In fact, Frenchman François Lequat, who visited the Cape in 1698, later wrote in his book "A New Voyage To The East Indies" published in 1708, that their wine was "the best in the colony and similar to our small wines of Champagne."