Ashanti Travel Centre is offering a wine testing tour to five different wine estates with Wine Flies around Stellenbosch and Paarl for an awesome wine tasting.

Of course, South Africa has plenty of wine farms and wine testing tours and you think, every tour is more or less the same. Sure?

The Wine Flies Wine Tours provides the opportunity to test fantastic wines at different wine farms combined with a Braai, cheese tasting, chocolate, and dry fruits. The tours are only leaded by locals what I think is one of the best parts of the tour because of the background you get.

I have done one of these tours with Wine Flies around Stellenbosch. We visited the wine estates Fairview, Villiera, Middelvlei, Lovane and Anandale.

Pick up time was at 8:15 at Ashanti Gardens. Lord Granwell, our tour guide, explained during our bus trip a lot about wine in South Africa. He knew a lot about wine and you recognized that wine is more than his job because of the way he was speaking. That made the whole trip very informative and authentic. He also played good mood music during the bus drive which provided an easy and relaxing atmosphere before we had the first glass of wine.

Our first stop was at „Fairview Wine Estate“. Alone the entry was incredible: plenty of flowers and meadows and a huge compound with a tower for the goats. The male goat with his huge horn was on the top of the tower and observed what´s going on at the estate. Very curious!

Before we got our first wine, we had to learn how to taste the wine right: there are five steps you need to follow for the best taste experience:

1. examine the color
2. swirl the wine
3. smell the wine
4. taste the wine
5. savor the wine.

After this introduction we tasted our first wines combined with the perfect cheese for every sort of wine. It was delicious! Afterwards we could buy this cheese and wine at a small grocery store at the estate.

The next stop was at „Villiera Wine Estate“. We tested the first two wines at the terrace in the lovely sun. Before we tried the next ones, we made a little walk through the vines and Lord Granwell told us about the historic wine growing in South Africa, which problems they had and how it works from growing to the perfect bottle of wine.

After this informative story we tried some more wines and ate Biltong. This combination was for me a bit strange in the beginning but the perfect wine quite good!

Alcohol without eating isn’t a good idea. That´s why we had a Braai at „Middelvlei Wine Estate“. We caught sandwiches with cheese, tomato and onion, chicken, sausages and salad. During the lunch we enjoyed an awesome view over the wine lands and mountains. Not only the meal and the view were different from the other estates: we made a tour through the wine cellar and tried wine directly from barrels. It was very exciting to fill the wine with a special kind of pipe into the glass.

We moved on with full tummies to the next wine estate, „Lovane Wine Boutique“. The wine testing was at the cellar this time. We tried different kind of wines with different kind of chocolate: some with nuts, salt or white chocolate. Sounds weird but the combination tasted really good.

Our last stop was at „ Annandale Wine Estate“. The wine estate from Gerhard „Hempies“ du Toit, the old national player from Springboks. We tried amongst others the wedding wine from Prince Albert and Charlene from Monaco in combination with some sort of chocolate or dry fruits.

On our way back home we drank a bottle of wine. This was our award from the wine quiz that we have done before. The group was separated into two different groups to play a funny quiz. The winner got a bottle of wine. In fact that we all are winners, we shared the bottle. Besides it makes more fun to drink together!

Are you still interested in a tour from Wine Flies? Then check it out at Ashanti Travel Centre.

Cheers!