Epic wine tasting adventure in Cape Town’s winelands

Posted by Sarah Duff on 15 December 2010

I had never drunk wine at 10 in the morning before last weekend. What I thought was going to be a fairly tame meander through a couple of Constantia vineyards in Cape Town turned out to be rather an epic seven-hour wine tasting excursion that saw us getting rather drunk before midday. I usually have a rule about the midday drinking thing, but wine blogger extraordinaire (and our appointed winetasting guide) Harry Reginald Haddon had us on a tight schedule that saw us sipping wine right after breakfast.

Fourteen of us piled into a kombi and another shuttle and missioned out to Noordhoek to our first stop (at 10 am) at Cape Point Vineyards, where Harry had organised us a tasting of their limited release wines, which costs R45. I must say that the first wine (a Sauvignon Blanc produced for Woolworths) was tainted with a toothpastey flavour, which is what happens if you brush your teeth before a wine tasting (not recommended) but by the second wine I started getting into bouquets and textures and complex flavours. Well I tried to anyway.

I love wine and I do drink a fair amount of it, but I am by no means a connoisseur. I’m trying to change that by really concentrating on distinguishing flavours and smells when I drink good wine. I had decided that a day of winetasting was to be very focused wine training, with Harry there to advise on things like texture (a new thing I learned) and complicated scientific-sounding wine making procedures.

I loved the Chardonnay 2008, and while I didn’t pick up the oatmeal flavour, I got apricot and citrus (two out of three isn’t bad). We were lucky to try the Noble Late Harvest 2002, as there are only 90 bottles left of it. It tasted like pure honey – sweet, golden and thick. It doesn’t have particularly complex flavours, but according to the wine tasting guy, it’s great poured over ice cream or your boyfriend/girlfriend. Ahem.

So, after Cape Point Vineyards made us tipsy with their delicious wine, we set off in the winemobiles for the next stop – Klein Constantia. We had a quick tour of the cellars, during which some of us got a bit silly (won’t name names), and then had a pretty long tasting of what seemed like all of their wines.

I got very excited when I could smell jasmine flowers in a glass of 2009 Riesling. I also picked up citrus (but not candied orange peel) in the 2005 Vin de Constance, but all I could muster to describe the 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon was ‘grapey’. I think my winetasting ability peaked about half-way through the Klein Constantia tasting, and then went downhill from thereon.

By the time we left Klein Constantia, the group had become a lot more rowdy and the drive from Klein Constantia to Buitenverwachting saw us all singing along to blasting music in the winemobile.

At Buitenverwachting we tasted the Buiten Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Rough Diamond. By this point I couldn’t taste any particular flavours or textures (although I enjoyed all the wines thoroughly). I had sort of given up on training my palate. I think everyone else other than master wine drinker Harry was in the same boat as me though.

We decided that it was pretty important to eat something at this point, so we took a time out from tasting and had a delicious picnic on Buitenverwachting’s rolling lawns. We couldn’t eat and not drink, so we ordered several bottlels of Buitenverwacthing’s Chardonnay, Sauv Blanc and Buiten Blanc.

We somehow managed to extract ourselves from the picnic blankets and mission forth to our last stop for the day – Steenberg. We tasted their bubbly, which was supposed to have green apple notes on the nose, and freshly baked biscuits on the tongue. I got the apple, but not the biscuits. Maybe it’s because I eat a lot of apples, but hardly ever bake biscuits. Anyway, it was delicious. We also tried their Merlot blend and a Sauvignon Blanc.

After buying a couple of bottles for the wine tasting afterparty, we finished off the tasting at Steenberg with a bottle of bubbly on the sunny terrace. If we hadn’t stuffed ourselves full of picnic food earlier, I would have definitely gone for one of their tapas platters too – they looked pretty tasty in my drunken state.

We ended off the day at my house, drinking all the Steenberg wines we had bought and then gatecrashing a party of middle-aged people dressed up as school children. But that’s another story entirely.

Cape Town winelands wine tasting info:

Cape Point Vineyards is at 1 Chapmans Peak Drive (what an address!), Noordhoek.
Tel: 021-789-0900
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.capepointvineyards.co.za
Weekend opening times: It’s open from 10h00 to 17h00 on Saturdays and 10h00 to 16h00 on Sundays.
Cost: The tasting we did of their limited release wines costs R45 a person.

Klein Constantia is on the Klein Constantia Road, Constantia.
Tel: 021-794-5188
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.kleinconstantia.com
Weekend opening times: It’s open on Saturdays from 09h00 to 15h00.
Cost: The wine tastings are free.

Buitenverwachting is on Klein Constantia Road, Constantia.
Tel: 021-794-5190
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.buitenverwachting.co.za
Weekend opening times:
Cost: Wine tastings are free.
Click here to see their picnic menus. Picnics are available on Tuesdays to Saturdays from 12h00 to 16h00. Contact Adrienne on tel 021-794-1012.

Steenberg is on Steenberg Road, Constantia.
Tel: 021-713-2211
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.steenberg-vineyards.co.za
Weekend opening times: The wine tasting room opening hours are Saturdays and Sundays 10h00 to 18h00.
Cost: We did a classic tasting of six wines which was free. You can do a flagship tasting with ultra premium and icon wines for R50, or a food and wine pairing tasting, which costs R200.
Pop into Steenberg’s restaurant, Bistro 1682 after your wine tasting for tapas on the terrace.

Transport around the winelands

I don’t recommend doing this route in your own car – drinking and driving is not the way forward. We used the services of two great shuttle companies. The drivers were reliable, on time and friendly (and they even let us play our music at full blast).

Jono Tours & Transfers transported nine of us in a kombi which we named ‘the winemobile’. To hire a driver and a seven to nine-seater vehicle with Jono Tours & Transfers, it costs R900 a day for eight to nine people (or R300 a person a route, minimum of two people) on the Constantia Wine Route, R1100 for the Franschhoek Wine Route, and R1000 for the Stellenbosch Wine Route. Contact tel 021-426-5537, cell 072-969-0493, email [email protected].

Citi Shuttles took another five of us on the trip. For a Constantia Winelands tour it costs R900 for one or two people, and R2900 for nine people. For a tour of Stellenbosch and Franschhoek Winelands (five to seven hours) it costs R1200 for one to two people and R3200 for nine people. Citi Shuttles also doe airport transfers, tours around Cape Town and trips to Hermanus and Kleinbaai. To see other Citi Shuttles routes and rates go to www.citishuttles.co.za. Also visit their blog about what’s on in Cape Town. To book a shuttle, call cell 082-707-1135, tel 021-559-5467, or tel 021-820-3887 (after hours), or email [email protected].

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