Nothing else quite like the Karoo Wine Club's Stoep Tasting

Nothing else quite like the Karoo Wine Club’s Stoep Tasting

05/2022 Mike Froud Leave a comment

IT’S UNIQUE. Over a long weekend in May every year throughout the small towns of Graaff-Reinet and Nieu Bathesda in South Africa’s Great Karoo, thousands of wine lovers arrive from far and wide to meander among the houses, wandering from veranda to veranda – or stoep to stoep, as they say in Afrikaans. Every hotel, guesthouse and BnB is fully booked; the local hospitality can be pretty special in this part of the Eastern Cape. However, the visitors have come to indulge more in the products of Stellenbosch, Paarl, Franschhoek and other areas, places hundreds of kilometres away from the ‘oases’ in the arid Karoo where the land is condusive to making good wine. Over 50 cellars as well as a number of craft/artisanal brewers and distillers are represented, offering tastings and sales of their bottlings at some three dozen stoeps.

It’s quite unlike any other wine festival, and quite different these days relative to how things started out. 2014 was when the Karoo Wine Club’s first Stoep Tasting took place in Graaff-Reinet: five wine producers serving whoever was on the verandas at five of the houses in town. Since then, ticket sales have increased from 45 to 3000. Visitor attendance is limited to make for a relaxed, country experience, and cellar participation is by invitation only – which makes the list of wine exhibitors (below) somewhat interesting as much in terms of who gets the nod from the club as who doesn’t.

P.S. Although the weekend tasting passes and accommodation are mostly taken up in advance of the festival, last-minute ticket sales are on offer via the Graaff-Reinet tourism office.