Voyager Estate tours started life as the brain child of a group of resourceful staff members who saw the opportunity to combine their collective stories of Voyager Estate and their knowledge of wine growing, making and drinking, with a memorable and unique journey through the Estate. We asked recent visitors Carrie and Steve Young to share their tour journey with us.

When we booked for a winery tour of Voyager Estate, we weren’t expecting it to be such an experience. We thought it would be a short walk through the vines, a glimpse of the winery in action, some wine tasting and then go home.

We were surprised, then, when we were met at the Cellar Door by Britta, our tour leader, a young Canadian woman dressed in khaki. We thought we were going on a tour of the Rockies! Britta was one of the staff who had the idea to set up the tours and she is made for the job of tour leader. She knows everything there is to know about Voyager Estate, knows a lot about wine and is really outgoing and friendly. She even proved her off-road skills with some tricky bus driving… and what a bus. It looks like a safari bus, which seems suitable for Voyager Estate and its reflection of South Africa. It’s definitely not camouflaged though - it’s painted bright orange and you can see it from a mile away. It has no doors, no windows, and looking at the canvas seats we were expecting a bumpy ride but it was surprisingly comfortable, if a little nippy the day we went.

Once we were all on the bus the tour started with a look at the oldest vines on the Estate. From there Britta drove us to the Power House. Inside is a beautiful polished diesel engine (a Davy Paxman - Ed ) used for back-up in the event of power failure. It looks like just a shiny toy, but it really does work. Apparently it was rescued from a scrap yard and restored, probably to a better condition than it ever was. From there we saw the dams, the pump station and drove through the vineyards, seeing different blocks of vines. We even saw a sample soil test pit, the type they dig to see if the soil is worthy of planting.

The pièce de resistance was the barrel cellar. Wow. We were expecting a pokey, musty cave but this was enormous. It felt like we were under the Roman brick arches of Italy. The bricks for the roof were all laid from the top - 70,000 of them. No wonder it took three years to build. It was good to see the wine barrels in there and find out where they were at in the fermentation process. We would like to have seen more of the winery, but for safety reasons we couldn’t go in, although Britta was able to tell us a lot about winemaking and what was happening in the winery at the time which was great. They were preparing for the grapes to come in because it was just before harvest. Once we had finished at the winery we were ready for the wine tasting.

Britta took us back to the cellar door and we got to taste all the wines, including some not normally available for tasting, and learned some more. We also booked in for lunch afterwards which finished off the whole experience and really made the day.

When we tell people about the tour we let them know to expect something that is definitely different. You don’t just see a few vines and taste wine; you get to know about all the wine – the growing, the making, the entire business. Britta made it ‘real’ and, not only do we know more about what goes into a glass of wine, we appreciate it more now too.