[2] Napoleon Bonaparte had as much as 1,126 liters (297 gallons) of Constantia wine shipped in wooden casks each year to Longwood House, his home in exile on St Helena from 1815 until his death in 1821.

[3] In Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen's character Mrs Jennings recommends a little Constantia for "its healing powers on a disappointed heart".

"[6] In 1913 Klein Constantia was purchased by Abraham Lochner de Villiers, a wealthy milliner from Paarl, and his American heiress wife, Clara Hussey.

Dressed in the latest fashion, Clara, whose grandfather was the first Pittsburgh steel tycoon, [7] threw parties which were the talk of Cape Town, where Russian caviar was served, swathed in barrels of ice, together with oysters and smoked salmon; orchestras played, and peacocks strolled on the lawns.

Fine furniture and paintings were brought for the house, they added a dining hall, with a minstrel's gallery, a private chapel, and then a classical pavilion which stood beside a large swimming pool set in landscaped gardens.

As they had no children of their own, their nephew Jan, son of Rocco and Annie de Villiers of Paarl, was designated as their heir, and sent to the University of California at Berkeley for two years to study viticulture.

[9][10] Duggie's son, Lowell, joined the team and together they helped to revive Klein Constantia's wines and the entire estate: completing work on a full cellar and tasting room by the mid 1980s.

[11] Klein Constantia released its first vintage of the modern era in 1986 to much critical acclaim and quickly developed a reputation as one of South Africa's top wine estates.

Both have been regular visitors to South Africa for the past twenty years, and together with their families now divide their time between their respective homes in Europe and Cape Town.