Like lashings of creamy, churned butter the yellow canola fields wash over the hillsides of Bot River aka Butter River. The official story of how the region got its name though dates all the way back to 1672, when the San people traded their butter with merchants along the river.
Butter has long since stopped being the area’s calling card, these days it’s rather the wine that’s attracting visitors. With around 14 estates falling under the place of origin, this scenic slice of the Overberg has held onto its pastoral roots, and the estates have that genuine farm-feeling that too often gets steamrolled over with contemporary design in the larger wine regions.
I pull up at Beaumont Family Wines; the characteristic Bot Rivier breeze whips lightly through the air. Matriarch of the estate, Jayne Beaumont greets me. She founded the farm in 1974 with her late husband, Raoul.
“My life has been a series of moments of madness,” says the petite Jayne, her light blonde hair is bobbed to her shoulders. We’re seated by the fireplace in the tasting room. On the way in I noticed a few of Jayne’s famous sheep paintings.
“I’ve always been drawn to the arts and the sciences,” she says, while telling me about her childhood. She grew up on a rural farm in Constantia. “It wasn’t like it is now,” she says laughing. “Back then Klein Constantia had chickens!”
After school various paths presented themselves, from pursuing her BA to studying art at Michaelis, and to doing a teaching course.
She met Raoul Beaumont on his 32nd birthday (he was 11 years older than her). “Raoul was a larger than life character, a rebel at heart,” she says fondly. She had bumped into him at a pub where he was celebrating with friends. “I remembered reading about his engagement to an acquaintance of mine in the papers, so I congratulated him.
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