Some 70 top restaurants cater for every palate against spectacular natural scenery. The perfect background for SA’s first UNESCO City of Gastronomy. The region is home to two wine routes, the Stanford Wine Route (9 wineries) and the Hermanus Wine Route (23 wineries). The latter incorporates the famed South African Pinot Noir haven – Hemel-en-Aarde (Heaven & Earth). This area links to a further three wine routes and collectively this is known as the Cape South Coast wine region comprising 85 wineries.

Creation Wines on the Hermanus route is an industry leader in wine tourism and has won accolades in the Great Wine Capitals (GWC) Best of Wine Tourism Award three times in five years. In 2017 Creation Wines won the category ‘Innovative Wine Tourism Experiences’. The GWC is a network of ten major global cities in both the northern and southern hemispheres which share a key economic and cultural asset: their internationally renowned wine regions. The annual Best of Wine Tourism Awards is an international competition designed to reward the wineries in member cities and wine regions that have distinguished themselves in terms of delivering quality experiences to the public. Creation has done ground-breaking work in the field of wine and food pairing and is one of many local wineries to extend their wine presentation to include music and art.

Another pioneer in the Hemel-en-Aarde wine region is Hamilton Russell Vineyards who were the first vineyard to establish themselves on the most southerly site in South Africa on an undeveloped 170-hectare property in 1975 and today produces a selection of noble varieties that is sought after the world over and is sold out year after year. Bouchard Finlayson was the second winery to establish in Hemel-en-Aarde and is owned by the Tollman family who owns the Travel Corporation are the proprietors of the Red Carnation Hotel Collection, The Oyster Box in Umhlanga, Twelve Apostles Hotel in Camps Bay and Bushmen’s Kloof in the Cedarberg. On the Hermanus Wine Route there are 6 restaurants at wineries, 2 farm stalls and one long standing country cook-house.

Springfontein on the Stanford Wine Route has the singular honour of having a Michelin star chef in charge of operations. The Overstrand’s Hermanus has a beverage economy that includes 3 beer breweries of which one has won gold at the National Beer Trophy Awards for the past 2 consecutive years.