Lunch at Zevenwacht – simply heavenly

It is more than a little fit­ting that Zevenwacht Wine Estate should lie on Langverwacht Road in Kuils River. We found ourselves on Bottelary Road in Bellville, a road we were not famil­iar with — some­thing we enjoy doing on a week­end; see­ing where the road takes us — and as we headed into and past Brackenfell, our hopes (a long time wait­ing) at find­ing a lunch venue extraordin­aire dimin­ished some­what — Brackenfell hardly equates with sprawl­ing vine­yards and moun­tain views.

Fortunately for us, Zevenwacht was sign-posted left off Van Riebeek Road towards wine coun­try on Strand Road, and we found ourselves head­ing up the hill to one of the lesser known wine farms in this part of the world ...

The lower reaches of Zevenwacht (it lies on the hills above Kuils River) are dom­in­ated by garden 'estates'; gated vil­lages that have become fairly com­mon­place on wine estates. The archi­tec­tural char­ac­ter of the estates were in keep­ing with a wine estate – in the his­toric cape cot­tage, tin roof and gable style – so that des­pite this devel­op­ment on the lower slopes, the estate up on the hill cer­tainly didn't seem to be in any way diminished.

The estate itself eludes one, giv­ing extra potency to its pos­i­tion on Langverwacht Road – it is really 'long-awaited' by the time one bends the curve of the drive­way and sights the manor house dir­ectly across a shim­mer­ing lake. Only the swans were miss­ing to com­plete the pic­ture, although there were a few ducks.

One travels uphill for a fair amount of time, leav­ing the res­id­en­tial coun­try and eques­trian estates well behind. Zevenwacht, or 'seven expect­a­tions' – called this for the 'at least' seven delights that appar­ently await vis­it­ors to the estate – is part of the Stellenbosch wine route. It's a fairly small affair and vine­yards cover 200 hec­tares of the 450 hec­tare farm. The views from here over Table Mountain are, to say the least, gorgeous.

The res­taur­ant is set in a 19^th cen­tury Cape Dutch manor house that is quite simply beau­ti­ful. It rests on the slop­ing banks of a lake bordered by pretty gar­dens, and from the other side of the lake looks like some­thing from out of a pic­ture story book. It has appar­ently been fairly recently restored, and its rooms, wooden floors, gor­geous gables and taste­ful fur­nish­ings are worth a visit, even if you're not going to stay for a meal.

The res­taur­ant describes its food as 'con­tem­por­ary con­tin­ental cuisine', which essen­tially means it serves some­thing for every­one. Salads, aside from the con­ven­tional Caesar and Greek ver­sion, also include an ori­ginal poached pear and blue cheese salad, and main meals include items such as crispy duck, roas­ted rack of lamb, pork fil­let, sir­loin steak, Norwegian sal­mon wraps, a parmesan veget­able bas­ket that soun­ded par­tic­u­larly tempt­ing, veget­arian penne, and won­der­ful curries.

This ver­it­able feast uses as many veget­ables, salad leaves and herbs as it can from its own garden, grow­ing lit­er­ally a few metres away. The only down­side is that they're def­in­itey not organic as the estate sprays its grapes.

Desserts include crème brŭlé, lemon sher­bets, cherry jubilee, rooibos poached pear with a pine­apple tart, French meringue with car­a­mel­ized bana­nas, rais­ins and a brandy anglaise, as well as Zevenwacht's chocol­ate delight, which waf­ted past me just as I was seated – a chocol­ate envel­ope filled with chocol­ate mousse and served on a bed of orange seg­ments and a vanilla tuille bis­cuit – hmmm hmmm!

The restaurant's ser­vice was fault­less and they went out of their way to make us feel at home, par­tic­u­larly as we had to con­tent ourselves with an indoor table next to the win­dow as the patio was full. But we were soon con­sort­ing with the hoi paloi out on the stoep, the views over the lake def­in­itely one of the finest lunch­eon views imaginable.

My bet­ter half savoured a sur­pris­ingly fruity glass of Sauvignon Blanc 2009 that I can highly recom­mend, hav­ing taken more than a couple of sips (I was the des­ig­nated driver). The best part about it was that the acid­ity was down played whilst a tre­mend­ous fruit­i­ness dom­in­ated. It's described as hav­ing 'a pal­ate of gra­na­dil­las and goose­ber­ries, accen­tu­ated by a juicy, fresh acid­ity which car­ries the fruit right to the back of the pal­ate and pro­longs the linger­ing after-taste' – couldn't have put it bet­ter myself.

I had a won­der­ful warm potato and roast chicken salad that came served on a bed of baby spin­ach leaves with avo, cherry toma­toes and a yoghurt dress­ing. It was filling and they weren't shy with their ingredi­ents. Our other meal was a won­der­fully tender chicken tikka. It cre­at­ively skewered chicken pieces on lem­on­grass, served on a bed of lem­onzest bal­samic rice with veget­ables, and a paw paw, cori­ander and feta sambal.

The res­taur­ant is also no stranger to chil­dren and has a kid­die menu, whilst the garden serves as a great dis­trac­tion for after they've fed. There is also a play park for chil­dren, although hav­ing lunch closer to this facil­ity involves buy­ing a pic­nic hamper before­hand from the estate, a lovely option, but one we didn't feel inspired to take.

Zevenwacht offers vine­yard and cel­lar tours, full-time chef's courses, a cheesery that pro­duces a farm­house ched­dar, the Mangwanani spa, and a series of vine­yard cot­tages, chalets, and a coun­try inn with lux­uri­ous suites.

Contact Zevenwacht Wine Estate:
'Telephone: +27 (0)21 903‑5123

Useful Stellenbosch Links:
Stellenbosch Attractions
Things to Do in Stellenbosch
Stellenbosch Hotels
Stellenbosch Accommodation
Cape Winelands Accommodation