JOURNEY INTO WINE

Journey into Wine introduces the infectious personality and formidable knowledge of French wine expert Isabelle Legeron as she explores the world of wine. Her honest, simple approach affords a valuable insight into what is all too often a rarefied and obscure subject, illuminating us with her own passion for wine.

This series, she travels to South Africa and the country's best known vineyards in Cape Town, Constantia, Stellenbosch, Paarl, Franschhoek and Walker Bay. Along the way, she gets to know the people that live there and produce wonderful wine. She's also introduced to some of the extraordinary local success stories and epic landscapes that typify the country's vibrant character.

EPISODE 1

Isabelle opens the series in South Africa’s oldest city, Cape Town, and takes a trip up the slopes surrounding Table Mountain to visit South Africa’s oldest vineyards and sample its oldest wine – a favourite of the great and good in the 18th and 19th century. She harvests Sauvignon Blanc, explodes myths about food-wine combinations, explores the burgeoning wine culture in one of the country’s largest townships and heads off wine tasting in a shebeen.

EPISODE 2

This episode finds Isabelle Legeron travelling inland to Stellenbosch, the heart of the Cape Winelands, and home to some of the world’s most cutting edge wine research. She explores Pinotage, South Africa’s very own grape variety; meets South Africa’s first black female winemaker; and visits a variety of wineries from a DIY garagiste to a biodynamic winery that harvests according to the moon. The programme ends with a visit to South Africa’s most decorated winery.

EPISODE 3

In this episode Isabelle hits the vineyards on horseback, hijacks a tourist tour with invaluable tips on tasting wine, and meets the man behind the brand that had France’s winemakers up in arms. She travels to the heart of Afrikaaner country, gets an insight into the complex and troubling history of the region through the archaeology of one winery, and ends up in Franschhoek or the French corner, South Africa’s culinary capital, where she finds out how a handful of Huguenot asylum seekers changed South Africa’s winemaking fortunes forever.

EPISODE 4

For the final leg of her journey, Isabelle Legeron heads seaward to Africa’s most southern vineyards planted on some of the oldest soils on earth. She finds out how the environment affects our appreciation of wine, puts her taste buds to the test after jumping off a cliff and finds out what makes the ‘heaven on earth’ valley the ideal place for producing world-class pinot noirs and chardonnays. She meets a generation of new winemakers intent on relegating the Apartheid era firmly to the past, and a visit to the world’s first fair-trade winery provides an insight into the wine world of tomorrow.

Isabelle’s travelled to South Africa with South African Airways

If you are thinking of travelling to South Africa, these are the organizations that helped Isabelle organize her journey visit .