The ethos behind Boutique Winery Tours and what we hope to offer our visitors, is a intimate wine experience that will introduce you to some of South Africa’s top performing boutique wineries and some of the most passionate and interesting wine folk.
So I’ve decided to start profiling some of the wineries that I love to visit on my
Best of the Boutiques wine tours and who better to start with than Black Elephant Vintners and Co. who I popped in to see again this past weekend.
BE Vintners is a collaboration of three very talented and creative individuals, Jacques Wentzel the winemaker, Kevin Swart and Raymond Ndlovu – whose names translated inspired the label: Swart means black and Ndlovu means elephant.
The tasting experience is hosted by Kevin at his home La Petite Vigne in Franschhoek. He is the perfect front man for the business, extremely engaging and witty he will keep you captivated from the minute you sit down. Their idea is to offer unplugged wine tastings: intimate and informal in the same way that Nirvana performed their unplugged sets compared to a big arena setting. All the wines have very cleverly been paired with songs and each have a unique label and symbolism. I won’t give too much of that away as its part of the fun in visiting and Kevin tells the stories far better than I ever could anyway.
The wine is pretty damn good too, take the Methode Cap Classique- nominated for a Platter's 5* this year, is in my humble opinion one of the nicest MCC’s on the market and has some of the most suave packaging – no gold and tinsel as Kevin puts it. The Amistad Syrah is also sublime and probably my favorite of all their wines but there is something to offer everyone including some very small production wines from their experimental Back Roads label that are offered exclusively to those that make the trip to the farm.
Join me on a Best of the Boutiques wine tour, where you will get the opportunity to experience exclusive tastings at wineries like Black Elephant Vintners and stay tuned to hear about some of my other favorites.