AN INTRODUCTION TO
SOUTH AFRICAN WINE COUNTRY
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The wine-growing area in South Africa is located within a two hour radius of Cape Town in the southwestern corner of the country. This area has a Mediterranean climate suited to premium wines. It is temperate and there is abundant sunshine during the growing season. The grapes are kept cool by the strong southeasterly winds that blow over the South Atlantic Ocean from the Antarctic. Because of the consistency of the climate, there are not radical vintage variations. The first wines were made in the 1650s. I have separated the information into several categories, which you can access via the side bar.
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The famous Portuguese explorer, Bartholomeu Dias, was the first European known to land at the Cape in 1487, naming the tip of Africa “Cabo de Bona Esperanca”: the Cape of Good Hope.
Nearly a century later, England embarked on the exploration wave when Sir Frances Drake circumnavigated the world. In his diaries, he wrote:
“This Cape is the most stately thing and the fairest cape we saw in the whole circumference of the earth.”
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