Wine Tasting in Stellenbosch
After a surprise free breakfast at the hostel we mooched around before leaving for our wine tasting tour.
We had booked this through the hostel to get a discount and I mainly chose hostel/tour combo because of the logo.
After some miscommunication with whether we had to pay before leaving we finally left for the first of three vineyards.
Unfortunately after rocking up to the first stop in our very conspicuous tuktuk (with top speed about 20km/h) we discovered it was closed on Mondays.
Our driver explained this had never happened before and we headed onto the second stop.
The tuktuk was very quaint but had little suspension. We entered the security gate and passed by fields of grapes and over a number of harsh speed bumps until we reached a thatched long house.
We chose to sit outside and enjoy the nice garden. It wasn't quite as peaceful as we had hoped as there were building works going on in a nearby building but this didn't ruin the atmosphere.
We were given a price list and the tasting staff from the vineyard gave us an explanation and taster of 7 different wines including 3 white, 2 red, 1 rosé and a dessert wine. I begrudgingly used the spittoon after the first three for fear of being legless in the first hour. Olly however powered through.
I don't think the tasting guy had been using the spittoon as his speech was overcome by the giggles on a couple of occasions.
Our driver said he would treat us to a bottle of our favourite wine (we assume this actually included in our tour price) and after the purchase we headed to the next location.
En-route we discovered the alternative 3rd location (as the 1st was closed) would also be closed by the time we got there so we opted for some money off the tour. After chatting to our driver we realised this was only his second tour which seems to explain his comment about the first stop never being closed before!
At the second vineyard we tasted 5 different wines and again were treated to a free bottle of our favourite.
After sufficient wine our driver took us back to the hostel, we dropped off our free bottles then had a lift into town for an early dinner.
In the end 2 vineyards was enough and I'm glad we didn't opt for the 8am start hop on hop off 12 vineyard tour.
Stellenbosch is a very small quiet town which is mainly composed of university campus. It seems to be much greener than Cape Town and we aren't sure if this is due to a rainier climate or laxer water restrictions.
We are off to the Cederberg national park tomorrow with has little mobile coverage so there will likely be a pause in blog updates.
