About 40 kilometers from Cape Town International Airport, you are treated to a spectacular venue of sensory pleasure delight. From the bottom floor's wine tasting to the top floor's beer tasting and all of the pizza, pasta and burgers you can eat, and an ending in ice cream from a local chocolatier, you will not regret stopping by The Spice Route.
Too Many Choices
You can spend the whole day walking the premises of The Spice Route and not do everything to offer. From the local brewery, Cape Brewing Company, to a wine tasting situated in what feels like a 1940s movies scene, you cannot complain that there are too few activities up for offer.
Being a beer fan, this stop obviously tickled my fancy, as I have been drinking CBC beer for many years now. But the wine tasting is also a must, especially because of how beautiful the setting is.
But one can eat from real Italian pasta to locally made beef burgers to pizza overlooking the Cape Town Mountains.
Wine Tasting
You can opt to sit inside or outside. Both feel like a movie set, a certain déjà vu struck me. Maybe it feels like one of those Indiana Jones movies, I am not sure! But it has that feeling, it almost feels "foreign" in South Africa.
Obviously being part of the Spice Route, it plays on the very Middle Eastern feeling. The building feels very new, but in the same breath, very old. It feels like the walls can tell you stories and whisper secret recipes long forgotten. It calls you closer as you try to walk past it.
Even the decor calls your name, and they make the spice route and spices very obvious.
If you succeeded in not getting sucked into the wine-tasting room with its stunning decor, you can walk the beautiful corridor lined with vines of grapes towards the beer and food.
Beer Tasting and Brewery
Most wineries and breweries hide where they make the wine and beer. Some of them do guided tours and showcase the inner workings, but CBC brewery took it to another level:
their whole brewery is behind glass windows.
You can in other words look into the inner workings of a functioning brewer whilst you brew beer. This sounds very romantic until you smell an actual brewery. On the weekends they obviously do not brew because of the smell, I would reckon. Plus, CBC brewery has become so big that some of their beers are even brewed outside of South Africa! (Some of their beers are brewed in Sweden and then shipped back to South Africa. I cannot imagine that that is very environmentally friendly...)
The brewery is impressive and I think it would have cost a pretty penny. But if you can afford to brew your beer on the other side of the world, money is not a problem.
The brewery was quite full when we arrived and there was no open space. It is rather sad that people overwhelm places like this, I guess I am also part of the problem! (More on this ranting below.)
Food Galore
I think there are about 5 or 6 places to sit down and grab a bite. Pizza, pasta, burgers, and fine dining, you will not miss anything. There is also a very symbiotic relationship between the different food shops. For example, the pasta shop, a real Italian place (no cream in their carbonara!) does not serve pizza, and the fine dining does their own thing.
Ending Off With Ice Cream at the Chocolatiers
You can end off with something sweet. After all of the pasta and pizza, wine and beer, you will be craving something sweet. They make some of the best chocolate, a very rare local find!
But be prepared to wait, as this proved to be one of the more popular places, especially on a hot day! The Paarl is a place where you will know it is hot, as it gets hotter than Stellenbosch there. Because it lies in a valley between the mountains, the cool air does not get there from the ocean.
Ice cream was thus the best call to make! And most people did just that: collect around the ice cream stand.
Postscriptum, Or Please Wait and Be Patient, We Will Serve You Later
From the get-go, we were told to park in a different spot. It was very full. Normally, we stay home over the festive season because we know you cannot do anything. People flock to the few places that are open. But we still choose to do something, we were prepared to wait a bit. But we did not anticipate just how much waiting was required.
The line for the pizzas was about ten to twenty people strong. I do not want to know how long the people who sat down waited for their pizza. The restaurant we eventually choose to sit down in, informed us after sitting down that the table was in fact booked by someone else. The ice cream line was also ten to twenty people strong. After a while, we just gave up. We do not like very crowded places, so we left without even a beer.
Now, this is not to critique the place, it is rather a liking on our part. We like a little quieter place. The place is stunning, the decor is beautiful. The staff is friendly and the people are passionate. And what they did worked, evident from how many people visit there.
It is still a must-visit for anyone who would like to feel the spice route vibes, and who would like to have way too many options to eat and drink!
I would go back there any day. The whole feel is very "exotic". For those wanting an authentic South African experience, this might be a little bit different.
All of the photographs were taken with my Nikon D300 and 18-70mm lens. The musings are also my own. I hope you enjoyed this virtual tour with me. Safe travels, and stay well!