Jan 21 2010
Wine areas of South Africa
In the previous article we discussed such a continent as Africa and spoke about wine history of this country. Today we will discover where they grow grapes for their wine – in other words, we will talk about wine areas of South Africa.
Wines from South Africa differ from other wine labels by their relatively low prices and a great variety of quality level. South Africa is counted to be famous as New World wine country because they not far a long reached the world wine market, despite the fact they started their way of winemaking in the 17th century.
Generally, South Africa is divided into nine grape growing areas, but between them the most famous are three ones: Constantia, Stellenbosch and Paarl. These three wine areas are situated not from each other and near one South African town called Cape Town.
Constantia is located in the suburb of Cape Town. This place is known as a first place of wine growing in this continent. This a wine region of fabulous beauty, where you can see vineyards situated on the slopes of a mountain, which are generally chilled by wind blowing from the sea. This region belongs to five main companies: Groot Constantia, Steenberg, Klein Constantia, Buitervenwachting and Constantia Uitsig.
Stellenbosch region you can find not far away from Cape Town. This region is famous as a chief South Africa wine area, because of the amount of wine they produce. This town is the property of university, that is why when you arrive in it you can feel the atmosphere of relax, despite a big size of this town. Vineyards located in this region are surrounded by mountains. There are some south africa wine tours for this vineyards, because of fantastic beauty of this place. Here we can count several subregions by reason of different geological conditions. Therefore in the east of this region African wine producers make really good red wine and in the west all of them are specialized on white wine.
As for Paarl you can find it if you go from Cape Town directly to the north-west. This south africa wine region is a native land for some outstanding South African wine producers like Plaisir de Merle, Fairview, Veenwouden and others. Paarl region is famous to be a white wine region, but due to its Mediterranean climate conditions, now it is also specialized on few kinds of red wine. By temperature characteristic this area is hotter than Stellenbosch wine area that is why the best examples of wine from Paarl region we can discover from more elevated places.
Now let us speak in short about those regions which didn’t get in to these three main ones. Let us name them: Elgin, Franschoek, Robertson, Swartland, Walker Bay and Worcester. Elgin region is famous for its good examples of fruit wine, Robertson is known due to its great whites. If you visit Walker Bay do not forget to purchase its Chardonney and Pinot Noir, because they are extremely good there. Franschoek is counted to be a capital of winemaking in South Africa due to the cool climate conditions, it produces practically all kinds of wine.
