Sipping South Africa

At the storied wineries of the Cape, red wines have finally come into their own.

- Nina Caplan

Babylonstoren in the Cape Winelands, a 2025 Global Tastemakers award winner, is a remarkable place to stay for food and wine lovers, featuring an edible garden, wine museum, gelato room, and more.

WE WEREN’T IN A HURRY to get to our destination. And even if we had wanted to rush, the curves of Chapman’s Peak Drive on South Africa’s southwest coast—and the views along it—wouldn’t have allowed it.

Luci, my bubbly, in-the-know driver, was taking me around the vineyards of Franschhoek, 45 miles east of Cape Town, and the Swartland, about the same distance north. But first, she insisted on driving me along this incredible road, which undulates south from the city past Table Mountain National Park toward the Cape of Good Hope. We stopped at places like Boulders Beach, where penguins peeked out from behind boulders as the sea washed into False Bay, the water gradually changing from shades of turquoise to a rich, deep navy. There were plenty of swimmers here, but across the peninsula at Noordhoek Beach, there wasn’t a soul in sight.

“Riptides,” Luci explained.

South Africa is a place with a lot going on beneath the surface, in every sense. Wine is a prime example. Viticulture has long been an integral part of this region’s agricultural heritage. But while those early vines were brought by Dutch colonizers in the 1650s, the actual hard work of planting, tending, and harvesting the vines was carried out by enslaved people, whose labor and essential understanding of the landscape went uncredited for generations.