Day 7

Franchhoek Wine tram

Today we spent the day on the wine tram, well actually it was wine bus and a wine tram as the tram only goes to two vineyards. We stopped at six vineyards namely, Le Lude, Le Petite Dauphine, Holden Manz, La Couronne , Rickety Bridge and Grand Provence.

Le Lude was our first stop where we tasted two types of cape classic sparkling wine, now I'm not a fan of sparkling wine but what's not to enjoy about a glass of fizz at 10 in the morning. Stop two was La Petite Dauphine, a very small vineyard, Where I tried the five different wines, the best by far was a blended red called Gentle Giant 2009, what made it even better was it was less that five pounds a bottle! Next stop was Holden Manz where we had pre booked a picnic by the river. The picnic consisted of a small chicken, salads, bread, fruit and cake. It was washed down with a bottle of the house rose wine, a perfect lunch sitting in the sunshine.

Back on the bus we stopped a La Couronne where Fi enjoyed a wine and chocolate tasting, which according to Fi was excellent! We then transferred to the wine tram and headed to the Rickety Bridge vineyard, we were met off the tram by a tractor and trailer to transfer us to the vineyard. We tried five excellent wines the best being a 2015 Sav blanc and at 3.25 a bottle we just had to bring one home with us! Last stop was the Grand Provence where we tried a total of 9 wines, five were with a selection of canapés!! All the wines were excellent over the whole trip and it was fantastic although I suspect my liver wouldn't agree :-)