Taryn is the owner of “The Wine Specialist” and she will be our driver and guide for many days of wine touring. Our guidance to Taryn when planning this part of the trip was to focus on smaller, boutique wineries known for the quality of their wine. She has been running wine tours for many years and has great relationships with the wine farms and winemakers.
The Stellenbosch wine region is South Africa’s most famous wine production area with over 200 wine farms on the touring route. We have an early (9:15am) pickup to start today’s touring and we are focusing on the wineries in Stellenbosch’s Simonsberg area.
Our first stop is at the ‘Deux Freres’ (Two Brothers) farm, a boutique vineyard in the Simonsberg foothills. The staff is in the midst of bottling. It’s an interesting process, very manual but efficient. All their wines are produced from estate grapes. The winery focuses primarily on Cabernet Sauvignon and a very small planting of old vine Sauvignon Blanc.
Next, we stopped at ‘Mitre’s Edge’, another boutique winery, for a tasting and cheese pairing with owner and winemaker Lola Nicholls. Lola is one of the few woman winemakers in the region. Her focus is on Bordeaux style wines and has replanted a significant portion of her vineyard to focus on those style with excellent results. Her flagship Bordeaux wines consistently garner awards. She was very gracious with her time, but she also looked really tired.
Onward to the family-owned Delheim Wine Estate for lunch in their garden restaurant. The scenery is awesome, situated on the slopes of Simonsberg mountain with beautiful valley views. We sampled wild Chenin Blanc (another wine South Africa is known for) with our meal and later a range of various Pinotage.
Our final stop of the day is at Oldenberg Vineyards. Another spectacular setting. Oldenberg primarily focuses on reds but also produce Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc. We tasted from their range of wines paired with interesting cheeses and olives.
Coolest of all was the ‘magic napkin’!
Overall, a fine start to wine country exploration. We ate so much during the day we decided to skip dinner and just snack on some cheese and crackers (and wine) back at the Guesthouse.