A Tasting Tour in South Africa

Since South Africa is the 9th largest player in the global wine market, we figured a tasting tour was imperative during our stay. And it turned out to be an excellent outing.

There are literally hundreds of vineyards situated about an hour east of Capetown, and there are just about as many tour companies to choose from, ranging from bicycle tours to backpacker tours to high-end private gourmet tours. Most take off from the town of Stellenbosch and hit the areas around Franzschoek and Paarl to visit four wineries and have lunch. We ended up picking a tour through the Stumble Inn hostel in Stellenbosch because it was only $50/each and covered a wide area so we could see quite a bit of countryside. And it came highly recommended in Lonely Planet.

We had to get ourselves to Stellenbosch, so we opted for the train (see separate post about theft we witnessed), which was ultra cheap at $3/each roundtrip, but a little unnerving. In the end I’m glad we picked this lengthier option over getting on the Backpacker Bus, as it was our main experience with how the other half lives.

From the Stellenbosch train station we only had a 7 minute walk to the hostel, which turned into a 20-minute walk because I’ve generally lost my navigation mojo. (I left it somewhere in Australia. We are doomed.)

We reached the hostel, which reconfirmed my disdain for places like that, even though it was a comparatively nice one. There’s just an inherent hassle involved with all the people milling around. But we did get a look at the most elaborate “truses” as I’ll call them – flat-nosed trucks with big boxes on the back with big windows and seating, used mainly to transport tours in rugged areas. We saw them in the desert in Australia, too, and I can’t imagine that they’re comfortable, even if they’re practical. Some of the people on our trip had traveled from Nairobi in one, which has to be like going from L.A. to New York. Not great for the weak in equilibrium.

The tour, despite our initial concerns that we’d be overtaken by rowdy 20-somethings, was really enjoyable. Our group of 17 was divided into two vans, and our first stop was Simonsig, a longstanding winery in the region and one of the pioneers of wine tourism in the area.

There young Paul, who reminded me of a purposely disheveled Ivy League frat boy with his underwear hanging out the back of his shorts, led us on a surprisingly informative tour of their winemaking process and cellar.

Then we sat in lovely area of wrought iron tables on the patio to taste a bunch of wines. We ended up liking the wines at this place best, likely because it was the only winery that gave us their premium stock, but probably also because it was the first place of the day. (Yes, tasting wine all day gets rather tiresome. Whine, whine, whine, boo hoo, I know. After 15 tastes I was ready for a tank of water.) It was here that we sat with a 30-ish couple from Australia that was coming to the close of 6 months of travel after working for a year in London.

Our next stop was Fairview, which had scenery equally as stunning as Simonsig, plus the most amazing flight of cheese we’ve ever tasted. Yum, yum, yum. They also had a clever “cheaper” line of wines called Goats Do Roam, which had names like Bored Doe. (For those of you who don’t know wine, Cote du Rhone and Bordeaux are French wine terms.)

After a truly tasty and comfortable al fresco lunch in Franzschoek, we drove up the hill overlooking the town to Dieu Donne winery. This one had a tasting room and a restaurant.

By the end of this stop, I was hitting my daily wine limit. But we still had one more stop to go: Boschendal.

Mr. Farmer took this opportunity to indulge himself as we chatted with the two Germans who we learned had been ski instructors in the Alps. (We asked them where we should ski next month.)

So that was that. Our drive back to Stellenbosch was about 45 minutes, and we had about an hour until the train left.

Amusingly, we saw this business on our way:

We got back to the Cape Town train station we were ready to get some dinner. The hiccup was that once we emerge from the station, the entire population of the city was doing some sort of community walk, which meant that we had to cross the excited crowd of participants a couple times, and nearly every business was closed. There were truly thousands of people walking, many dressed up in goofy costumes. Apparently the walk is a charity event held every year.

So we ended up getting room service (pizza and salad) from the restaurant in our hotel building and called it a night.

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