South Africa – a country of wine

Not only France is the country of wine. South Africa belongs among top ten world wine producers. Stellenbosch is situated in the area called Cape Winelands – a short look around is sufficient to discover why. Indeed, everywhere around Stellenbosch you will find plenty of wine farms.

One of the favourite activities, not only of tourists but also of locals, is wine tasting. If you don’t have any plan for Saturday afternoon, what is better than going to a close wine farm with few friends to enjoy few glasses of a good wine on the sun?

And that’s what we did last Saturday. From the wide range of wine farms that are situated around Stellenbosch, we chose the closest one where we can easily get by bike (to get to others, you usually need a car). After having cycled only ten minutes from my house, we arrived to the target of our journey – the Lanzerac Wine Estate.

Because it was a beautiful sunny day (it is still winter here but last weekend the weather was comparable to summer in Europe… a nice summer day of August), we preferred to taste our wine outside enjoying thus also the view over vineyards. At Lanzerac wine estate, you can choose among several tasting options. And not only wine is offered to taste. The most of us chose the option where you taste three wines (one white, one rosé and one red) as well as three matching chocolates (most of which, surprisingly, had the same colour as wines – white, pink (!), only the red wine was accompanied by a brown milk chocolate).

Enjoying the sun on the outside seating, however still without a drop of wine, we began to complain a bit about the slow service. Nevertheless, soon after this, the waitress came, apologizing for the slow service due to a big number of visitors. And as an excuse, she served us a free glass of wine! Hopefully we will have to wait next time as well.

The waitress presented each wine and then we finally could taste. At the end, we could visit the wine cellar with a guide who explained quickly the production process.

And how much does it cost? Prices of local wine are very accessible even for not very affluent students. In supermarkets you can get a bottle of quite tasty wine for only 30 rand (About 2.5€ / 60 CZK). This tasting of three different wines and chocolates cost us only 40 rand.

Having spent such a nice afternoon, we decided that we would do some other wine tasting soon. And for few of us, this “soon” was yet sooner that we had expected. We were to Cape Town yesterday and after having discovered the best food market I have ever seen (Old Biscuit Mill market that equals to a food paradise – but more about it in some other article), Lee (my great buddy, a South African girl studying at Stellenbosch University but who comes from Cape Town and thanks to whom me and my friends have already discovered plenty of great places and activities J ) suggested us that we can go for a wine tasting to a wine farm called Constantia Glen.

This time, we got six different wines for 40 rand (but no chocolate). And the quantity of the wine in the glass was not that one people usually imagine when they hear “tasting”. Indeed, regarding the quantity of wine in our glasses, we had enough to drink during the whole afternoon.

This wine tasting is kind of a favourite sport here around Stellenbosch as somebody remarked with a lough yesterday.

We have been wondering if we can visit all wine farms in Stellenbosch surroundings throughout the upcoming year. It seems that it will be quite difficult because they are really numerous but for sure, we will visit few others soon ;)

So, if you see somewhere a bottle of wine made in South Africa (and if possible in Stellenbosch), buy it and cheers! ;)