For years we would watch the tram buses arrive at our doorstep and offload thirsty tourists. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, they say. The Franschhoek Wine Tram has become an internationally-recognised attraction. Many thousands of people choose to make their Winelands visit a tour on the train/bus service.
While the wine tram brought us a seemingly endless stream of visitors, I question the longer-term value of this type of tourism, and what it means for the wine industry.
The winelands occupies a prime position in the world of wine tourism: proximate to Cape Town, surrounded by beautiful mountains, serving wines of excellent value, and, perhaps most importantly, offering a culture of informal tasting rooms. Unlike Bordeaux, which can feel transactional and hierarchical, or Burgundy, where access requires connections and forward planning, the Cape has historically offered something unique: informal proximity to the craft. Winemakers are readily accessible, cellars are open and geared towards visitors, tables don’t require reservations six months ahead. This informality is an asset. It is also, increasingly, a vulnerability. It doesn't defend itself. The same openness that appeals to the wine tourist also appeals to the tourist who happens to be doing wine, and infrastructure in the winelands has gradually reoriented to serve the latter.
As a small estate winery and organic grower, we aim for a winemaking niche: light, elegant, and restrained. We don’t make our wines to appeal to everyone: we make them to appeal to connoisseurs and wine lovers who appreciate and enjoy our specific style. A wine made to reward attention cannot be properly encountered in an hour, in a crowd, between stops.
The Wine Tram enforces an inflexible logic on its participants and on the participating wineries: 5-7 stops of 1 hour each, with crowds at peak times, 360 days a year.
I query whether the recognition of the tram as an “attraction” in its own right disadvantages the casual visitor’s experience of the winelands, and gameifies what was renowned as a relaxed way to pass a day into something forced, driven by schedule and timeliness, and focused on visiting a quantity of wineries rather than experiencing any winery’s offerings in a meangingful way.
The South African tourism industry has largely avoided asking whether volume and value are in tension, and which one to optimise for. Bhutan provides an instructive, if imperfect, counterpoint. Bhutan imposes a daily visitor levy, discourages group travel, and has built its identity around the idea that leisure should be unhurried and deliberate. Whether or not you find Bhutan's particular version of this philosophy persuasive, the underlying logic is sound: a destination that competes on volume races toward the bottom. The winelands' reputation was built on leisure, on the kind of afternoon that expands to fill the available light. It would be a particular irony if the industry's success gradually made that afternoon impossible to have.
Noble Hill is quieter now, and the trams roll past without stopping here. That's the point. If that sounds like your kind of afternoon, you know where we are.