An Indonesian hero and Cape wine 11 January 2008

More Islamic connections with old Constantia emerge

Visitors to Klein Constantia will have seen the kramat, or shrine, near its gate: it was built on the spot where Abdurachman Matebe Shah, one of the last great Sultans of Malacca and a political prisoner exiled from his homeland by the Dutch, is thought to have died around 1681. He helped spread Islam in The Cape, befriending the slaves in the Constantia valley where he lived a contemplative life.

But it appears now that the connections between old Constantia and Islamic Indonesia were wider than the current owners of Klein Constantia were aware. British academic Peter Carey has recently published a biography of Indonesia's foremost national hero, Prince Dipanagara (1785-1855). He wrote to Lowell Jooste of Klein Constantia telling him why the publishers had gone to the trouble of finding Vin de Constance to toast the book at its launch in Leiden in the Netherlands:

During my researches in the archives in Holland and Indonesia, I discovered that this Javanese prince, who led the great war of resistance known as the Java War (1825-30) against the Dutch under the banner of Islam, was a great admirer of Vin de Constance.

This consumption of alcohol might seem odd, Carey points out, to many present-day Muslims, especially given that Dipanagara led a 'holy war' against the Dutch in Java. He writes in his book about the prince’s drinking habits:

He drank wine in European company though he never took this habit to excess as other princes did at the central Javanese courts at this time. According to the German officer who accompanied him into exile in Manado, he held that it was not an offence against the Quran to drink sweet wine in view of the fact that Europeans drunk it as a form of 'medicine' whenever they were intoxicated with Madeira or red wine, a view which indicates that Dipanagara had his own independent interpretation of The Prophet's injunctions.

The officer who escorted the Javanese prince on his voyage into exile in 1830 reported as follows, says Carey:

'Dipanagara told me that he would willingly drink some sweet Constantia wine because he was weaker daily, and that Resident Smissaert had given him that wine on the occasion of every midday meal.

'Never again will I be in a position to see a face so striking as that of Dipanagara while engaged in wine tasting. The two bottles [of Rhine wine and Constantia wine] were in front of him and in turns from one to the other they were tasted by means of a beer glass .... [T]he next day I came to Dipanagara at the moment when he was finishing the last of the Constantia .... he told me that this wine tasted very good all the more so because he had not drunk this delicious wine for five years [ie during the war].'

 Lowell Jooste says that he ‘had no idea that Vin de Constance was exported to Muslim countries too’. The old Constantia wine was, of course, one of the most illustrious of the time – mentioned by Jane Austen and Dickens amongst others, and much favoured by Napoleon. Now another prince’s name can be added to the roll-call of the rich and famous who enjoyed it.

In turn, author Peter Carey had not known about the kramats of Constantia. He finds ‘a wonderful completeness’ in the fact. ‘If Dipanagara had known that his favourite wine had come from such a place graced by the kramat of a Muslim divine from Malacca, he would have been deeply satisfied.’

– Tim James

• Peter Carey’s book (nearly 1000 pages long, he warns!) is called The Power of Prophecy: Prince Dipanagara and the End of an Old Order in Java, 1785-1855, published in Leiden by  KITLV Press, 2007. (Click here to email the publisher to order or enquire about the book.)

COMMENT

From Grant Dodd:
What is the correct serving temperature for Vin de Constance, and in your opinion, the most suitable food match? I have a bottle that is awaiting execution and this has piqued my interest enough to do so.

Tim James responds:
Pretty cold is probably best for most sweet wines like this. Some like it chilled to about 6ºC, but it could be a bit less frigid than that, in my opinion. But maybe start it off at the temperature at which it would come out from the fridge, and it'll warm up a bit. As to food – there's only one basic rule for dessert wines, I think: the food must be less sweet than the wine, or the wine can taste rather thin. There is, you might know, a book of recipes by Michel Roux of Le Gavroche in London, designed to go with Vin de Constance. (See review.) They are mostly desserts, but also include savoury dishes – based on foie gras and blue cheese, for example (both of which are classic combinations with sweet wine). I reported about a year ago, very happily, on the amazing spread of food designed by top local chefs, as a sort of tribute to Michel Roux and to the wine. You could look at that to get some ideas of what can be done, if you're an ambitious cook (I particularly remember the smoked duck being a sublime match). Otherwise, stick to a simple dessert (crème brûlée or apple tart, perhaps), or good blue cheese, and you should be safely happy. Enjoy!