The Cape winelands, stretching inland from Cape Town at the southern tip of South Africa, are structured and dominated by formidable, dramatic mountains that provide the backdrop to the gabled and thatched 18th and 19th century Cape Dutch wine farms, and the elegant wine towns of Stellenbosch, Paarl and Franschhoek. Some of the most beautiful vineyards in the world are here.
Vines seem to scale the mountains, finally merging into sheer rock faces.
Always there are distant vistas of high peaks the Helderberg, the Simonsberg, the formidable range of the Dutoitskloof Mountains. It is a land made for grape growing. The intense heat of the interior of South Africa is gentled by the influences of two oceans the warm Indian and the cool Atlantic which border the Cape to the south and the west. With its Mediterranean climate, similar to that of northern California, this area has the potential to make some of the best wines in the world. Later, when the country was part of the British Empire, South Africa supplied fortified wines to a thirsty British public.