Babylonstoren

Is Babylonstoren Worth the Entrance Fee?

This is the question most people actually arrive with, so it is worth answering plainly. Babylonstoren is one of very few Cape wine farms that charges to walk in the gate, and R150 a head feels steep next to neighbours who charge nothing. Some visitors resent it. Read the reviews and you will find people who thought it was an expensive garden and not much more.

The counter-argument is the structure of the fee. It is not a day ticket. Once you register it through the farm's app, it becomes a twelve-month membership with unlimited return visits, and it currently includes the daily guided garden tour, the Story of Wine museum and the exhibitions in the Puff Adder tunnel. If you live in the Cape and go three times a year, it works out at R50 a visit. If you are a tourist passing through once, it is R150 to see a garden.

The honest summary is that Babylonstoren rewards time. Visitors who allow half a day or more consistently rate it highly. Visitors who squeeze it into ninety minutes between two other farms tend to leave feeling they overpaid. Plan for at least four hours or choose somewhere else.

The History: From a 1692 Land Grant to Karen Roos

The farm was granted in 1692 to the free burgher Pieter van der Byl by Simon van der Stel, then Governor of the Cape. Van der Byl planted vines almost immediately and redirected the water courses to irrigate them, and some of the standing structures date from that period. The manor house came later, in 1777.

What makes the werf remarkable is how complete it is. The traditional H-form homestead, the gabled henhouse and pigeon loft, the storerooms, the wine cellar, the stables and the workshops are among the best-preserved farmyards in the Cape, and together they give an unusually clear picture of how a self-sufficient rural operation actually worked.

The modern chapter starts in 2007, when Karen Roos and her husband Koos Bekker bought the farm. Roos, a former magazine editor, led a restoration that kept the original fabric and inserted contemporary design alongside it rather than over it. That combination, old bones and modern eye, is the reason the place looks the way it does, and it is why Babylonstoren gets written about as a design story as much as a wine one.

The Garden

The garden is the reason the farm exists in its current form, and everything else is downstream of it. It runs to roughly three and a half hectares, about eight acres, laid out in fifteen sections and holding more than 300 plant varieties. Every one of them is either edible or medicinal. It was designed by the French architect Patrice Taravella, who recreated the medieval monastery garden at the Prieuré d'Orsan, and it takes its inspiration from the Company's Garden in Cape Town, the vegetable plot that provisioned ships running between Europe and Asia and the reason the Dutch settled the Cape at all.

There are more than three kilometres of paths through it. The sections worth seeking out include the cycad collection, the Garden of the San, the stream and clivia walk, the prickly pear maze, the Byzantium bee sanctuary and the Spice House, a domed conservatory of cinnamon, ginger, turmeric and cloves with tropical fish beneath the deck.

The Puff Adder is the showpiece. It is a curved timber tunnel of balau slats on a steel frame that cuts out about 40 percent of sunlight, with a stone floor of 362,160 individual stones designed by Katie Lewis. It houses the clivia display in spring and a remarkable pumpkin display in autumn, some of them ninety kilograms and some smaller than a fist.

The Healing Garden is quieter and worth ten minutes. Its beds are laid out in the shape of a human body, with herbs planted according to the part of the anatomy they were traditionally used to treat. Note that children under ten are not permitted in it.

You are encouraged to pick and eat as you walk. That is unusual and it is the detail most visitors remember.

Wine at Babylonstoren

Around 94 hectares are under vine, producing 13 varieties. The whites are Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, Viognier and Sémillon; the reds are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Shiraz, Pinotage, Pinot Noir, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Mourvèdre. The highest blocks, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, sit at around 600 metres against the Simonsberg.

The range runs to four whites, four reds, a rosé and a Méthode Cap Classique. The flagship is Nebukadnesar, a Bordeaux-style blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec. Sprankel is the MCC, and was the wine the current tasting room opened around.

The tasting room sits beside the cellar with floor-to-ceiling glass looking out at Babylonstoren Hill, the Simonsberg and the Banghoek Mountains. Tastings are first come, first served, so at busy times you queue. Add a platter if you can: the deli and dairy board with farm charcuterie, water buffalo mozzarella and homemade preserves is the one people remember.

The cellar tour is the better use of money if you are here for the wine rather than the garden. It takes you through the working cellar with its amphorae, concrete eggs and open fermenters, and finishes underground. Book ahead, since group sizes are deliberately small.

Where To Eat

Babel is the flagship restaurant, in the old cowshed, all whitewash and glass. The menu follows the garden, so it changes constantly, and the colour-coded salads are its signature. Breakfast runs daily 08:00 to 10:00, lunch Wednesday to Sunday 12:30 to 15:30, dinner daily 18:00 to 21:00. Booking is essential.

The Greenhouse sits at the far end of the garden in a conservatory built in France for the farm. Food is served picnic-style in wooden crates and weck jars: salads, breads, cheeses, garden juices, scones with honeybush tea. It is the natural stop after a walk and does not need booking.

The Old Bakery runs themed evenings. Italian nights on Monday, Tuesday and Friday from 18:00 are a family-style three-course affair around R600 for adults and R300 for children. Carnivore Evenings on Wednesday and Sunday from 18:30 are communal long tables of Chianina beef with live accordion music, around R950 including two glasses of wine.

The Spice House takes private bookings of 13 to 24 guests for a spice-led menu, around R950 a head. The Old Stables at Soetmelksvlei serves Boland heritage cooking from the hearth.

One thing to know: you cannot bring your own food or drink onto the farm. Everything must be bought on site.

Soetmelksvlei

Soetmelksvlei is a separate experience a short shuttle ride from the main farm, and it is the thing most people do not know about until they arrive. It is a recreated late-19th-century farmyard where craftspeople actually work: blacksmithing, milling, distilling, carpentry, milking and cream separation, with ox wagon and donkey cart rides and a restored farmhouse, cellar and mill to walk through.

It runs Wednesday to Sunday, 09:00 to 17:00 with last entry at 16:00, and costs around R300 for adults and R100 for children aged 4 to 17. It is deliberately kept apart and reachable only by booked shuttle, which is what preserves the atmosphere. Families rate it highly.

The Farm Shop, Spa and Everything Else

The Farm Shop is a series of rooms rather than a single space: a bakery, a Milk Room for the farm's cheeses, a Meat Room for Chianina charcuterie and biltong, the Lekker Room for rusks and dried fruit, a coffee roastery with its own blend, and a Gelato Room in a converted chicken coop serving gelato made from the farm's water buffalo milk. The Scented Room next to the garden shop sells soaps and oils distilled on site.

The farm's products win serious awards. At the 2024 Aurora International Taste Challenge it took 14 golds, including double gold for the water buffalo yoghurt and the Frantoio extra virgin olive oil.

The Garden Spa is set in a bamboo forest with water channels running through it. It has a double hammam, a Rasul chamber, sauna, salt room built from Himalayan salt blocks, vitality pool and a 16-metre heated pool, plus the usual massages, wraps and facials. It is open to day visitors as well as hotel guests, daily 09:00 to 17:00.

Staying at the Farm Hotel

Accommodation is in restored farm workers' cottages and farm buildings, split across the Farmhouse, Garden Cottages, Fynbos Cottages and Family Houses. Thick whitewashed walls, fireplaces, underfloor heating and full kitchens, so you can cook with what you have picked in the garden.

What is included is unusually generous: breakfast, unlimited garden access, a guided garden tour and farm walk, a cellar tour and tasting, bicycles, rowing on the dam, guided fishing, morning harvest with the gardeners, bread baking with the bakers, spa access and the farm workshops. Rates start somewhere around R10,000 a night and climb steeply in season.

Planning Your Visit

Arrive early. The reviews are consistent that the farm fills up from mid-morning, particularly on weekends and school holidays, and the difference between 9am and noon is substantial.

Wear flat, comfortable shoes. The garden paths are gravel and in places covered with peach pips, which is charming underfoot and hopeless for heels, and worth knowing if you are pushing a pram or using a wheelchair.

Book what needs booking before you come. Babel, the cellar tour, Soetmelksvlei, the spa and the workshops all need reservations. The garden, the Greenhouse and the tasting room do not.

Bring a card. The farm does not take cash. Leave the dog at home unless it is a guide dog. And if you want a full day, budget realistically: entry plus a tasting plus lunch plus Soetmelksvlei for two people runs well past R2,000.

Nearby Wine Farms

Babylonstoren sits in a dense corner of the winelands. Noble Hill is about a kilometre away, Vrede en Lust roughly three, and Boschendal seven. Kanonkop and Warwick are within eight kilometres toward Stellenbosch. If you are coming without a car, Babylonstoren is a stop on the Franschhoek Wine Tram from the Groot Drakenstein terminal, which is the easiest way to visit several farms and not drive.

That said, Babylonstoren is not a farm to combine with three others. Treat it as the day, or most of it.

Frequently Asked Questions