Stellenbosch and Paarl Valleys, Cape Winelands

Stellenbosch, Paarl and the wine lands

We spent a lovely day touring this area.

We started from Cape Town at about 9am and drove to Paarl. Our first stop was the monument the Afrikaans language which is on a hill top not from the Paarl Mountain. This monument seems to be open every day except Christmas Day and New Years day it opens at 8.30 but it stay open longer on the summer months. This is a very interesting monument symbolising the different language influences that make up the Afrikaans language with a cooling fountain and water feature in the middle symbolically bridging the continents of Asia and Africa I believe.

We chose to visit one vineyard near Paarl and one near Stellenbosch. The one near Paarl was the Fairview vineyard which I chose because it had a special tower for its goats to climb up and down via a spiral ramp. It also made and sold goats cheeses which you could taste at the same time as you enjoyed your wine tasting. You paid 25 R per person (11 ZAR to the £1 when we were there) and you got to taste 6 wines and about the same number of cheeses.

We particularly enjoyed this vineyard’s wine names as they had ‘Goat Door’, ‘Goats do Roam’ and the one we didn’t really get was ‘Goat Roti ‘but it might be out lack of wine areas or knowledge. We all found it not that nice a wine either but it is all a matter of taste I guess. The wines were quite reasonable prices at about 48R to about 98Rwith a few over the 100rand price tag. The staff were so friendly and very knowledgeable without being snooty. They offered advice if asked but were not in the least pushy. The cheeses were also a reasonable price and very tasty too – they were about 15 R to 25R in price range which I think is fair and then we saw the same Fairview cheeses in the local Spar supermarket and the ones that were 14.50R were 21R in the supermarket.

We then drove on towards Stellenbosch and tried to stop at the Tokara vineyard for lunch as the views are superb over the vineyards but unfortunately they didn’t serve lunch on Mondays so we had to move straight to the other vineyard we had chosen in this area which was Spier. We chose this one as it had a cheetah sanctuary within its facilities.

The Spier Hotel is the first luxury hotel in South Africa to be given a Fair Trade Certificate in Tourism. We didn’t stay at the hotel but we did have the most stupendous buffet lunch here. Within the resort there is a craft market and several large tented places with tables and chairs. We were hungry so we followed our noses in the direction of the cooking smells.

We found an area with tables and chairs and asked if you had to book, not at all was the reply and the lovely gentleman whisked us over to sit at a table under the most enormous tree with decorated metal hanging lights. We had hardly sat down and ordered some drinks when a lovely young African lady came and painted some white decorations on all of our faces. The drinks arrived with some bread and dips and a large salad. When we had demolished this, remember we had our gannet sons with us, the waiter then came to take us over to the buffet.

We had to walk through various other areas before we came to a huge African decorated tent with stalls along the side. Each stall offered different temptations. We could choose from a variety of venison, fish, starch ( this was the rice & potato stall) salads, vegetables, sausages, beef, lamb, chicken – I have honestly never seen such a huge variety and I walked up and down surveying my choices while the male members of the party just stopped at each stall and said ‘yes’ to anything and everything. The boys all went back for seconds but I was stuffed after my first plate load and waited for the dessert run.

The desserts were all on one stall but that didn’t limit the selection which was stupendous and there were lots of typically South African choices which I was very pleased to try. After the meal the boys lay stuffed on the sofas under the tree groaning. We all agreed that the meal would take a lot of beating, to be able to cut through a venison steak with a bread and butter knife just shows how tender it was.

We had planned a second lot of wine tasting at this vineyard but having enjoyed a bottle of their delicious Chardonnay with our enormous meal, none of us felt up to more tastings o we went off in search of the animals.

There were two sections the cheetah sanctuary and the birds of prey. We chose to visit the cheetahs who were all rescued and cheetahs cannot be reintroduced into the wild as they learn to hunt it is not natural within them as it is in lions. All the cheetahs there were hand reared as they were rejected by their mother or something had happened to their mother. You had to pay 25R to enter the area but if you wanted to go into the enclosures and pat the cheetahs then it was 100R to pet an adult and 200R to pet a baby one. All the monies went towards the upkeep of the cheetahs and you could also adopt a cheetah but I suspect that was quite a bit more money and of course the cheetah stayed in the reservation, you didn’t pop it in your bag and take it home with you!

After our wine and huge meal we decided it was time to head homewards. My very generous husband was driving and as he is not really keen on wines has volunteered to resist the temptation and was therefore feeling slightly less sleepy that the rest of us. The drive was lovely meandering through vineyards and gently sloping hills and we had a thoroughly pleasant day experiencing the Stellenbosch and Paarl wine lands.

I am sure there are other lovely vineyards but I would certainly recommend the three we visited. Fairview with its goat tower and wines with clever names, Tokara with the stunning views and Spier with the food fit for a king and their lovely cheetah sanctuary and bird of prey area.

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