More Than A Wine Farm

The first thing that catches your attention about Babylonstoren is the R100 (~$5) entry fee. As far as I know, this is the only wine farm that charges you to visit. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this, yet at the same time, I can understand why they do it considering the breadth of what you can experience. The good news is you can transfer your entry fee into a one year pass, where you can visit as many times as you like.

The Wine

As we’re intentionally visiting places where we can both experience the wine and practice photography, Babylonstoren often came up as a highly recommended place to do both. Before wandering the expansive grounds, we visited the tasting room for a tasting and a platter. The quality of both was exquisite. It’s no surprise that the wines produced consistently win awards. Their Mourvèdre Rosé is even the official wine of the Chelsea Flower Show.

All of their white wines were wonderful…and the platter? Well, just look and see how amazing it was. It is perhaps one of the best charcuterie platters we’ve had in all of our wine farm visits.

The tasting room is nice, but it’s what you would expect for the farm. It has a large bar area in the center, and the seating is more like standard chain restaurant seating than other farms. It’s a bit noisy, as it has a large seating capacity, but not too noisy to where you can’t hold a conversation with the people you’re sharing a table with. It’s also enclosed and air conditioned, which was nice considering we visited on a very warm day. We brought some of the rosé, viognier, and chenin blanc home with us.

The Grounds

We arrived in the afternoon, so we didn’t even come close to exploring the expansive grounds of the farm. There are multiple beautifully appointed gardens, shops, and restaurants within the farm. We visited the ‘fragrance shop’ (at least that’s what I think it was called), where there is a veritable potpourri (haha) of scented products from soaps to essential oils to candles.

We then wandered the grounds.

The grounds are picturesque, with plenty of opportunities for stunning photos. And to think we saw maybe a quarter of the farm. The waterfall photo was taken as the farm was closing and our day had to come to an end. There are endless views of the vineyards, flower gardens, and fields of lavender seemingly stretching to the horizon.

The Skinny on Babylonstoren

Even though it was hot and we were drenched in sweat, we were sad to leave with so much more left to explore. We had no idea the farm was that expansive, and it’s definitely a place that you want to visit when you have most of a day to explore. We are very much looking forward to experiencing the variety of restaurants available.

Although the R100 entry fee is a bit jarring, we did transfer that to an annual pass and will go back to visit and experience more of what Babylonstoren has to offer.