At least twice a week at Parker, we invite our guests to share a glass (or three!) of wine with us at sunset. Suitably charged up for the evening, you can then take a short stroll through Cape Town’s mellow evening streets to one of several restaurants we recommend in the neighbourhood.
What’s so good about South African wine ?
Anyone who has ever got to grips with South African wine will know just how well made, diverse and incredibly good value our wine is. If you’ve never been to South Africa before, you are in for a real treat. The quality of our wine belies its price: you will be very pleasantly surprised at the fact that an excellent bottle of wine here costs less than US$30 and a very good bottle less than US$25. Also mark ups in restaurants here are never more than 100%, as opposed to 200 or 300% in the West, meaning that you can genuinely choose what to drink with your meal. And of course, you can buy excellent quality wine yourself at Parker Cottage or at the numerous wine shops all over the city.
Wine as an experience
One of the truly wonderful things about wine in Cape Town is that of course you’re in a city which just happens to have over 900 vineyards at its doorstep! So, you can visit a huge range of terroirs in less than 20 minutes from Parker Cottage and this also means that the vintners actually can also come to Parker Cottage to show off their wares. We regularly have local sommeliers, estate reps and also artisanal winemakers coming to our wine evenings to talk about why and what they produce. Of course, they join in with a glass or two as well!
Wine as a social event
Our wine evenings are not about tasting in the formal sense but more about the conviviality that wine brings to disparate groups. We aim to serve wines in the range that most locals buy, which where we find the most variety and the most intrigue. The whole point of the wine evening is to get to meet our guests socially (and for them to meet each other) in the kind of way that most bed and breakfasts don’t have the time or inclination to do.
A choice of venues
As with our breakfast, we match the location of the wine evening to the season. Winter and Autumn see us in the lounge or the drawing room, with a real log fire and lots of thick, fruity reds to warm us up. Spring and Summer will either see us on the stoep (if the Cape Doctor, our local wind, is blowing) or in the garden, by the fountain, under the stars, sipping on a light white or an easy red.
