You eat at Café du Vin in one of the oldest buildings on Franschhoek's main street, where the wine list runs to eight hundred bottles and the kitchen serves bistro plates. The cellar holds seventeen thousand bottles from Western Cape vineyards, with sixty available by the glass. A Coravin system pours premium wines without oxidizing them.

The Winemaker for a Day workshop runs for two hours in the wine bar, teaching eight guests at a time to blend, cork, and label their own bottle to take home. The loft upstairs has a patio facing the Franschhoek mountains, where you can drink before dinner. Downstairs, the Vintage Room seats eight beside the cellar for private tastings.

The building dates to Franschhoek's early years, when Huguenot Street was the village center. The wine list has held the Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence for five years running, a standard set in 1981 for restaurants that cellar seriously. You order from it in a dining room that uses the old walls, with fires in winter and air conditioning in summer.