To be expelled from the gardens of Babylonstoren would be worse than it was for Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden. This is as close to paradise as one can imagine, an oasis of imagination, abundance and diligence, where every single item is edible or useful, from the seed pods of the cacao tree to the fallen guavas begging to be picked up and the fields of chamomile.
Owl boxes play host to the birds of prey that keep the rodents down, flowers tempt beneficial insects and herds of springbok and reed buck bound through the orchards. Above rises the rocky slopes of Simonsberg, part of the range that rings Franschhoek, the wine-soaked town north-east of Cape Town in South Africa.
My friend and I arrived after a week on her farm in the Great Karoo desert, where baboons bark and rare Cape Mountain zebra roam. We had walked for miles without seeing a soul and feasted on kudu shot on the farm, before attending the stoep-tasting wine festival in the local town of Graaff Reinet, to which wineries from across South Africa flock with their finest bottles.
Among them was Babylonstoren, but we eschewed tasting the wines there in favour of trying them on site and we were far from disappointed. Deep in the vaulted cellars at Babylonstoren, tour guide Brent took us through 10 exquisite wines, made from the 13 grape varieties grown here, each paired with a morsel of deliciousness, from macadamia nuts grown on the farm to spicy cheese and homemade biltong.
Such is the quality of the wine that it is a surprise that guests staying in the Fynbos Cottages (above), as we were, are given the use of a golf buggy for the duration, to whiz up and down the roads through the citrus orchards groaning with fruit in the autumn of the South African year. We may have enjoyed ourselves a little too much: although, being of little power, the buggies don’t go very fast, they do bounce satisfactorily over the speed bumps by the tasting rooms…
Babylonstoren has an long and distinguished history, being founded when the Dutch were recognising the value of the Table Bay and the wider Cape, with its clement climate and fertile land, as a stopping point for Dutch India Company traders sailing to and from Holland and the Far East.
Today, the white-painted Cape Dutch architecture is characteristic of the area and especially of Babylonstoren, which dates back to when Governor Simon van der Stel granted the freeburgher Pieter van der Byl the land in 1692. The name comes from the conical hill that overlooks the farm, which bore resemblance to the Tower of Babel, in turn reflecting the many languages spoken here, from native Khoi and San to Dutch, French and German.
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