Our 2013 travels: Franschhloek to Cape Town and London

We awoke to what looked like a cold day and had serious doubts about the outside shower! However, it really wasn't that cold and before we went up to breakfast, we watched a rainbow appear.

When we were eating our breakfast, a baboon briefly appeared on the roof of the restaurant.

We packed up our bags and checked out. We had been offered a wine tour as part of our stay and this was scheduled for 11am. We had booked a table at a restaurant a short distance away at 1pm and thought that we would be kicking our heels for a while, but this was not the case.

At 11am we assembled on the lawn, as instructed and tried not to get mixed up with a wedding was taking place at the same time.

We were a group of six, a German couple, a local with visitor and us, plus the vigneron and owner of the hotel, John (the patriarch).

We have done many wines tours in our time and this was the best!

John has built the business, both the hotel and vineyard and is passionate and knowledgeable. His wines win prizes year after year although La Petite Ferme is not a big vineyard.

The tour was interactive, not a lecture. John was asking questions all the time and keeping everyone involved, and we were ordered to be quiet at times. We examined the vines in detail, covered the history of wine in South Africa and the terroir. Then we went inside to the business end of making wine. It was helpful that some of the red grapes had been picked only two weeks before and were still being processed.

In the vines he explained how he grafted his vines, the different soil types they have and how they decide when to pick the grapes.

We saw the white wines in their specially cooled vats (not something that we had seen inaction before). He explained the lengths that they went to to produce good Sauvignon Blanc. We saw red wine in open vats with the grape skins still in their cap. The floor was wet with grape juice/wine.

Then we went to the wines maturing in barrels and tasted them from a pipette (wine thief).

Finally, we tasted wines from the bottle including one that we had drunk the previous evening.

From previous experience, I expected that prices would be mentioned and that one would feel some obligation to buy. This was not the case. John simply wished us a good day and left us.

It was the most interesting wine tour we have experienced, ever.

So, we then headed for lunch at Rickety Bridge (that's another wine domain with a restaurant).

Here we had a very enjoyable lunch at a very reasonable price. This was the view from the terrace where we ate

We then meandered our way through the Stellanbosch wine area to Cape Town to return the car and take the plane to London.

The town of Stellenbosch, like Franshhoek, has many restaurants, but is but as tourisy. These are some of the scenes