Pop Your Cork!

If it’s superb vit­i­cul­ture you’re look­ing for, then spend­ing some time explor­ing the Winelands of the Western Cape will def­in­itely pop your cork. There are a stag­ger­ing num­ber of wine routes to choose from (around 560 winer­ies), most of which are little more than an hour, at most, out of Cape Town. And the socially-conscious trav­el­ler will be happy to know that SA has the largest num­ber of Fairtrade-certified winer­ies in the world.

The Stellenbosch wine route, the old­est wine route in the coun­try, boasts over 300 winer­ies. Stellenbosch itself is a uni­ver­sity town ... stu­dent drink­ing never had it this good. Visit the four sub-routes of Bottelary Hills, Devon Valley Vintners, Helderberg and Simonsberg-Stellenbosch (aka Cabernet coun­try) for a num­ber of truly excel­lent reds, as well as some great spark­ling wines.

The Constantia wine route is so eye-poppingly pic­tur­esque that you won’t believe you’re barely twenty minutes out of the city centre. One of the first wine-producing areas in the Cape, Constantia’s vit­i­cul­tural his­tory dates back to the 1600s. The val­ley is home to three of our most fam­ous estates, the heavy-weights Buitenverwachting, Groot Constantia, and Klein Constantia, as well as Constantia Uitsig and Steenberg. Try their Sauvignon Blancs and Chardonnays, or treat your­self to a bottle of sweet, golden Vin de Constance at Klein Constantia, a re-creation of the fam­ous Muscat Capp Constantia wine made in the 18^th and 19^th cen­tur­ies. And you’d best make time to enjoy lunch at any one of their fine res­taur­ants, while tak­ing in the gables and thatched roofs of the restored Cape Dutch archi­tec­ture (if that’s your thing).

Fleeing reli­gious per­se­cu­tion in their coun­try, a few French Huguenots settled in what is now Franschhoek, about an hour from Cape Town. The rest is wine­mak­ing his­tory, with more than thirty cel­lars pro­du­cing some of the country’s best whites, reds and, lately, spark­ling wines. 

A rel­at­ively young route, the Wellington winer­ies nestle at the foot of the Groenberg Mountain, also home to the major­ity of South Africa's vine-cutting nurs­er­ies (and, incid­ent­ally, a brandy tast­ing route ... go wild). Two words: Diemersfontein Pinotage.

This list could go on ad infin­itum. One really can’t take a step out­side of Cape Town without stum­bling into a world-class wine producer’s cel­lar (and really, would you mind?). Wine tour­ism itself is a bur­geon­ing mar­ket in South Africa, which means plenty of wine tours and tast­ing pack­ages are avail­able for you to explore any and all of these wineries.

But why stop at tra­di­tional tast­ing? Bikes 'n Wines offers a day’s leis­urely cycle around four wine farms for R290, which includes trans­port by train between Cape Town and Stellenbosch, bike and hel­met rental, a snack pack and, of course, wine tast­ing all along the route. Or try a com­bined wine and chocol­ate tast­ing at Waterford Wine Estate in Stellenbosch? Sample the chocol­ate delights, made spe­cific­ally to accom­pany the Waterford vino, while breath­ing the heady aroma of the sur­round­ing cit­rus orchards. 

So go on, have a glass or twenty. Culture’s never been this much fun.