This is really exciting to talk about. Here I am, a wine-lover-of-note, anxiously waiting for October to come when I go back to the Western Cape to visit another 7-10 wine farms. But out of the blue, another great but unusual concept pops up on Twitter.

It’s called the Vaal Wine Route and I have no idea why I have never ever heard of it. So thank you someone on Twitter for retweeting it and it somehow landed up on my timeline.

Let me explain this concept: Usually when I visit the Western Cape, you travel down a long road filled with a million wine farms, you enter whichever one you want and visit the wine straight from the source. The Vaal Wine Route chose the Vaal’s best restaurants showcased their most popular wines and we received a map of where to go.

Because of an illness, I was only able to visit on the last weekend but I had to make the most of it so we spent the night at one of the venues.

In total we were able to visit 8 venues where we made sure that we bought at least one bottle from each. Some places we landed up buying a case but I’m sure it will last us at least 3 months (If we don’t land up giving a lot away).

Going to so many venues exposes you to so many different tastes. Although you do land up a little dizzy from sampling so much wine, you get to appreciate the “amazingness” that is South African wine.

I know I always say that I am not a white wine fan, I found myself drawn to chenin blancs which is a white wine (in case you didn’t know) and a lot of rosé wines. So this trip was my chance explore the lengths of my pallet and to not pre-judge based on appearance of the wine or any previous dislikes I have with any of the types of wine.

I will definitely go back next year as this was such a great experience. The Vaal wine route needs more people to go to it and my group will grow to at least 4 people.

Thank you to the organisers for this great event. I thoroughly enjoyed my weekend!

Here are some photos from the weekend.