Wijntoer - Reserve tour with a winemaker!

We visited 4 boutique vineyards. Quality wines and great experiences. I had expected a wine maker to kead the tour and discuss the wines more, however that was not the case. TJ was a great guide providing lots of information on the area.

Great wine tour! My husband has been in the wine industry for years and our guide Louis was very knowledgeable. It was refreshing to have someone who knows and is willing to share so much local information on a detailed level about wine making. Louis picked wineries and made appointments based on our requests and nailed it! Lunch couldn’t have been better. I highly recommend this private tour.

We had a great tour around three Stellenbosch vineyards with Martin Stevens and a first rate lunch as well. It was great to see more of the area, surrounded by mountains and bucolic fields. Camino made everything easy, picking us up from our b&b and were very friendly throughout. Highly recommended.

Our wine tasting tour with Martin was a real highlight of our SA trip this time and an enrichment of our (but rather) tentative knowledge of wine, production, taste, judgement, etc. The German communication has contributed a lot to this and Martin is a really nice person with a totally likeable charisma. His wine skills impressed us. We can't think of a better guide here. Definitely we will come back here.

Great day out visiting amazing wine farms in beautiful Stellenbosch! Louis, our guide, is a qualified winemaker and he shared a lot of interesting insights to the ins and outs of the industry. Highly recommended outing!

Antoinette did a great job planning a private winemakers tour for me and my wife this September. She made a special effort to get us booked in some of the top wineries like De Toren, Richard Kershaw, De Morgenzon, Delaire Graff etc..... considering our visit was over the long Heritage Holiday weekend some of the Boutique wineries were closed she made special arrangements with the wineries to have someone available for tour and tasting. In addition to the wine tour she also made special hotel arrangements and dining reservation for us. Louis was the best tour guide for these two days as he was very knowledgeable since he had studied Enology and had been active in that industry. I would definately recommend this tour for anyone who has knowledge of wine. Most of the wineries selected for us making wines above a 90+ rating by Wine Spectator. Thank you Antoinette and Louis.

A few days ago, we explored the South African wine regions of Elgin, Franschhoek and Paarl with Camino Winemakers Way Tours. Janine van der Linde, a South African wine expert was our tour guide. On the first day, she introduced us to the cooler-climate Elgin-based wineries of Charles Fox Cap Classique Wines, Spioenkop, Oneiric and Oak Valley. The panoramic vistas of both the vineyards and the region that we saw from both Charles Fox and Spioenkop were spectacular! They gave us a real opportunity to understand and appreciate some of the impact of terroir on the wines we were tasting. We were completely impressed by the tastings led by Sonia at Charles Fox, Koen Roose at Spioenkop and Mark Wallace at Oneiric. Each of these individuals went to great (and patient) efforts to answer our many questions and were clearly very passionate about the wines they were producing. The wines themselves were, in many cases, outstanding – complete with balance, length, intensity and complexity. Absolutely an area, and wineries, very well worth the visit. We suggest that you bring a bigger suitcase than we did in order to bring back wines (depending on import laws where you live) or that you check into either the wineries’ distributors in your home country or their winery direct shipping options. On the second day we went to wineries in both Franschhoek and Paarl. In Franschhoek, we visited the exceptionally elegant Wine Studio at Mullineux & Leeu Family Wines and the lovely al fresco patio at Stony Brook. Vincent very skillfully led our tasting of the truly spectacular, low intervention, largely old vine wines at Leeu Passant (Mullineux highlights the Swartland region). He was eloquent, knowledgeable and very pleasantly answered each of our many questions. Meeting Joy McNaught, one of the owners of Stony Brook, was a real treat and her offer to sign a copy of her book “Headlong into the Red” was a highlight at this site (many of whose wines were excellent!)! In the afternoon, we headed over to Paarl and its Avondale Estate and Mellasat Vineyards. Avondale is the first biodynamic winery we’ve visited. Our tasting guide, Siya, explained that not only are vineyard practices influenced by the moon, but also taste characteristics. Avondale makes a number of delicious wines including a Blanc de Blanc MCC (100% Chardonnay) which they allow to mature for 7 years after 12-16 months on the lees. They are also experimenting with an interesting, unfiltered MCC which has spent 5 years on the lees where it has developed unique aroma and flavour characteristics (see what you detect!). Finally, our last visit of the tour was Mellasat. Bruce, our tasting leader, was a fantastic host – making us feel welcome with no sense of rush despite the fact that it was the end of the day. He was entertaining and knowledgeably led us through the background, production and characteristics of the various wines including their flagship White Pinotage, a new “Wild Child” with the aroma of toasted sesame crackers and absolutely delicious Cabernet and Tempranillo wines. Through all these wineries and tastings, Janine provided the all-important stories and linkages – explaining how different regions affect each other through the impact of landforms on weather, for example, and gently correcting any misinterpretations. She went above and beyond what would be expected of a tour guide - not only providing knowledgeable background and expert insights while navigating the three regions, but also generously sharing fun facts, insights based on her own personal experience and, incredibly, some of her own wine resources. It’s these memories of connections, human kindnesses and moments of sharing that are the true treasures of a trip. Many, many thanks to Janine (and Louis in Stellenbosch) as well as to all the winemakers and tasting room staff who made our wine tour of some of the Western Cape so memorable. Where possible, we’ve reviewed these estates or wineries on Trip Advisor as well.

Last week, we explored the South African wine region of Stellenbosch with Camino Winemakers Way Tours. Louis Koch, a grape growing/wine-making expert was our tour guide. His practical insights on the drive and his ability to draw out important information in the tasting room made the wine-tasting experience much more meaningful. He shared information on numerous topics including the impact of the drought on South African wines, straw wine production, vegan wines and how baboons are kept away from vineyards, to name a few. At the same time, his keen eyes picked up things we missed including a vineyard with relatively unusual cane-pruned vines and Chenin Blanc grapes drying for straw wine production. The estates and wineries we visited were fascinating and began with Super Single Vineyards, followed by the De Trafford Estate and finishing with Grangehurst. We’ve reviewed each of these sites on Trip Advisor as well.