I actually visited the Cape Winelands area twice. I spent a day here with the Gap tour, and then another day here on an Aviva tour (Aviva is the volunteer agency that I used). Over the two days we visited several wineries in Paarl and Stellenbosch, both of which started producing wine in about the 1850s. Of all the stops, I most enjoyed a winery called Fairview—see top picture below—but I still got bored half-way through the wine tasting part and left for the cheese tasting. I prefer to keep my unhealthy addictions strictly focused on food.
After Fairview, we had a nice lunch at the charming and upscale little town of Franschhoek, which means “French Corner” in Afrikaans. The area was settled by French Huguenots (who were kicked out of France for religions reasons).
The Huguenots brought wine growing to this region and the Dutch soon joined the picture too. At right is a picture of the town’s Dutch Reform church.
With Gap, we visited a very large winery called
"Spier." I think it was more of a distributor than a producer, and definitely was not as good of a visit as Fairview. We did a wine tasting here, but I really didn’t like any of them.
While everyone else was off doing wine stuff, I spent most of my time exploring the grounds, checking out all the flowers, etc… Collages of pictures are below.
I did get my face painted, at right. Not sure how that relates to wine, but it was a non-alcoholic activity so I did it.
Spier grounds:
Pretty flowers on grounds:
More Spier grounds:
