Dirk Coetsee established Coetsenburg, one of the oldest wine estates in South Africa, in 1682, on land granted to him by the Dutch Governor of the Cape Colony, Simon van der Stel, on the banks of the Eerste River at the foot of the Stellenbosch Mountain. He was the progenitor (Afrikaans: stamvader) of the influential Coetsee / Coetzee family in South Africa, a branch of which became Anglicized through intermarriage with the British Establishment after the British conquest in 1795.