Do it all in two wild weeks…

How often have you dreamt about standing right next to the thundering Victoria Falls, enjoying a sundowner on Cape Town’s stunning Table Mountain, shopping in Johannesburg, gliding in a dugout canoe through the swamps of the Okavango Delta and sleeping in a remote bush tent… but thought it not possible as your budget – and holiday leave – only stretches to two weeks.

Well, it is doable. In January my husband and I explored Southern Africa in 15 days. We spent five days in Cape Town, a weekend in Johannesburg, two days at Victoria Falls and five days in the Okavango Delta, taking in the best of South African, Zimbabwean and Botswanan sights and culture.

 

"Do it all in two wild weeks", by Alannah Eames

Click here to read the full article by Alannah Eames in the travel section of the Sunday Times, Malta, July 24, 2011.

Asara: a 5-star wine estate

So far I’ve counted 126 wine estates in the Cape Winelands but there are probably many more than this. Each one is unique in its own way and you would probably need a month, visiting around four a day to do them all properly.

The stunning view from Asara's main restaurant

We’re staying at the five-star Asara in Stellenbosch. The name Asara is inspired by the African gods of Earth, Sun and Sky (Astar, Asis and Asase) and the focus here is on balance and harmony with nature.

Which we feel immediately as we enter the long tree-lined driveway, passing the mirror-like dams packed with birdlife. Behind the water lie green vine-covered slopes. It’s a small intimate hotel that is elegant but not stiff and with breathtaking views over the Stellenbosch wine region, which we just can’t get enough of.

Asara is one of the bigger wine estates in the area – not in terms of its 120 or so hectares of grapes – but because it also offers 36 rooms, a restaurant, ballroom, bar and visitor center including a kitchen shop. The shop makes me laugh – if you are looking for a European pot or pan, or a kitchen gadget, you’ll find it here; they also have their own handmade chocolate truffles for sale. Service is also good, and fast, maybe the credit is due here to Asara’s Austrian owner Markus Rahmann, an avid wine collector who bought the 320-year-old Asara estate in 1999 and opened the hotel in 2008.

The perfect end to 2010 - a bottle of Asara's sparkling wine

We sample seven of Asara’s red and white wines (65% of Asara’s wines are red; 35% white) at the seven-course New Years’ Eve dinner. The food is delicious, especially the “trilogy of foie gras” (which is a unique combination of goose liver and chocolate pralines) and the cold melon and crayfish soup. For the main course there’s quail filled with prawns or a fillet of beef if you don’t feel like tasting the local birdlife. Their dessert and sparkling wines are particularly good.

Having dinner at a wine farm, served with wines produced from the grapes you are looking at and celebrating New Years’ Eve in the Cape Winelands is definitely an experience to remember. Unfortunately, there aren’t any fireworks, but on the distant horizon a bushfire is burning just outside Stellenbosch; luckily it doesn’t seem to be spreading in our direction.

I fell in love with the Asara the minute we checked in, enjoyed every minute spent there … and was sad to go down the driveway for the last time. It’s the perfect spot for a romantic weekend getaway with your partner, a few quiet days with friends or family or as a base to explore the magnificent winelands. You can put your feet up and chill out, but for people with itchy feet like me, there’s enough in the surrounding area to stop you getting bored – the sea is just 30 minutes away, Cape Town is less than an hour away, the stunning wine routes are on your doorstep and pretty Stellenbosch is just around the corner.

The charm of the Cape Winelands

If you’re a fan of South African wines, you’re going to be in heaven in the Cape Winelands, outside Cape Town. And if you’re not, you’re still going to love the winding wine routes that weave their way across the stunning landscape which is dotted with colonial-style wine estates, green vineyards, colorful flowers, set against a rugged backdrop of rocky mountains and gently sloping hills. The effect is so postcard-pretty that it looks almost like a “Photoshop job”.  That’s why the Cape Winelands were added to the “cultural” category of the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2004 – the first step towards getting them included on the official World Heritage List.

The picture-postcard-perfect Cape Winelands

Unofficially, Stellenbosch is often thought of as the “capital” of the magnificent Cape Winelands as it is the best known (and marketed) out of the six areas that make up the Winelands. However, the other five regions – Constantia, Franschhoek, Paarl, Robertson and Wellington – also have their fair share of great wines. In fact, Constantia has some of the oldest wine estates in the Cape Winelands.

South Africa is world renowned for its excellent wines. But this wasn’t always the case. The first attempts to produce wine in the Capelands in the 17^th-century were more or less a disaster; it took many years of trial and error before the locals got it right and earned the respect of the more established European wine industry.

Who wouldn't want to live here!

Back in the 1670s, Simon van der Stel, governor of the Cape, set his sights on developing the region and in 1679 he set the foundations of Stellenbosch. His own wine estate at Constantia, one of the first, also became well respected in Europe.

And, in another stroke of luck, the Protestant Huguenots were kicked out of France in the late 17^th-century. Fortunately for South Africa’s wine industry, some of them settled in the Cape area – mainly around Franschhoek, Paarl and Drakenstein – bringing their viniculture know-how with them which helped greatly to develop today’s South African wines, and on occasion, surpass their native French ones.

In 2008 South Africa had a “record crop” according to the Rabobank Wine Quarterly report and 2011 is expected to be another “healthy” crop, estimated to reach 1.35 million tonnes. However, while domestic demand for local wines rose in 2010 (in part due to the side-effects of the World Cup), exports dropped by around 4% due to a stronger-than-usual Rand and the ongoing impact of the economic crisis in its export markets.

Regardless of competition from New World countries like Chile, New Zealand and California, and from more traditional wine producing nations like Italy, Spain and France, South Africa is still right up in the top ten global rankings. One of the keys to the success of the industry, a wine industry graduate from Stellenbosch University tells us at a wine tasting, is that “we have always been open to new influences and technology and have a much more modern viniculture than that of the more traditional European vineyards.  We always try new things to improve the quality of the wine and to make our production more effective. Sometimes, in France, they still try to do things the way they did them hundreds of years ago, but they need to update because they are losing their competitive edge.”

Chinese visitors, to the Cape Winelands, she told us, are also increasing. “They want to learn from us so they can go back home and apply it to their own wine industry,” she says. Wine from China? Yep, China also has aspirations here and is moving up the list of global wine producing nations. It was recently ranked the seventh largest producer of wine in the world, according to a study by the International Wine and Spirit Record.

Just one of the many well-known South African wine brands that you'll find on your supermarket shelf.