Reblogged from Network24 / Worcester Standard
The 2017 Reserve Chardonnay of Bergsig Wine Estate can be described as a soft, friendly, and generous wine of great depth. Such is the serene memory and still contemporary description of Tant Anna Lategan.
Thanks to the well-known history writer of the late 18th and early 19th century, Lady Anne Barnard, a lot of information regarding Anna Lategan and her husband, Austrian-born Benjamin Gotlieb Weigt, has been recorded. What makes it so interesting is that Lady Anne noticed that Anna and her husband had a very moderate approach to their labourers. Anna’s warm personality and hospitable frankness enfolded everyone privileged to know her and who lived in her proximity. The good memories, regarding Tant Anna, as she was known, as well as her husband, had a long-standing influence on the Lategan family. Even long after her death, there was still talk and writings about Tant Anna.
Anna Lategan was born in 1752, second eldest daughter of the founding father Johannes Hermann (Jan) Lategan of the farm De Krakeelhoek (later called Welvanpas), in the Wellington district. A tall girl, she married her first husband and when widowed a couple of years later she married a retrenched soldier, Benjamin Weigt. He turned farmer when he married Anna and they lived on the farm Nabygelegen.
Our Lategan lady was a strong girl and, according to legend, seven-foot tall. Her husband was apparently nearly six-foot tall. According to Lady Anne Barnard, Benjamin was a former soldier who served the great King of Prussia. He, therefore, understood a little more about the ways of the world than most of the other local landowners and farmers.
Wine was an important product of the Lategan family. Tant Anna’s older brother, Willem Lategan, (which according to Lady Anne was even taller than his sister) produced excellent wine and Lady Anne wrote the following: “We went thro’ this gentleman’s wine house, and bespoke some excellent wine, some of which I hope we shall drink together in London.”
The good news is that more than two hundred years after this was written, excellent winemaking is still part of the Lategan clan’s culture.
The Tant Anna Reserve Chardonnay is a top-quality wine and pays homage to an ancestor with a wonderful abundance of good character…
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