OUR
HISTORY

In 1689 Jacques de Villiers, ancestor of the present day de Villiers family of Landskroon, arrived in the Cape together with his brothers, Abraham and Pierre. They came from Niort in the La Rochelle Province of France.

After farming in the Franschhoek Valley for a number of years, Jacques bought the farm Boschendal and the family farmed there until 1879.

Paul de Villiers, son of Jan Jacobus de Villiers, was born in 1850. Jan Jacobus, was the great grandson of Jacques de Villiers and the last de Villiers to own Boschendal.

In 1931 Paul (IV) was born. He was the fourth wine maker at the farm.

In the same year Paul (III)’s sons Paul & Hugo, bought the original Landskroon farm and consolidated it with Weltevreden, Schoongezicht and 50 ha near Klapmuts. The two brothers farmed together with Paul looking after the vineyards and making the wine while Hugo attended to the growing Jersey Cattle stud and established this stud as one of the top studs in South Africa.

During the 80’s more classic cultivars like Pinotage, Merlot, Shiraz, Cabernet Franc & Cabernet Sauvignon were planted.

With the size of vineyards increasing, the fermentation and storage space had to be increased and this was done during 2000/2001. This was also the year when the first mechanical grape harvester was bought.

In 2003 a new airconditioned bottle cellar was built. The old bottle cellar was revamped and the wine barrels were moved to this building. Temperature and humidity control of this cellar was upgraded.

During 2006 a new cooling plant for the cellar was installed together with better mash cooling of crushed grapes.

In 2015 major repairs was done to the “Landskroon dam” wall. The dam was ordinally built in 1963 and can hold 300 000 m³ of water.