St Francis turns water into wine

2026-03-08 - 18:43

If there is one event in the Eastern Cape that has true “WOW!” appeal, it’s St Francis Bay’s unique two-day Wine on Water extravaganza. Sponsored by Investec and organised by the Rotary Club of St Francis, Wine on Water is a happy hop-on, hop-off experience where attendees proceed from one tasting venue to the next, neither by foot, nor by vehicle, but by boat. St Francis Bay is best described as a holiday village for the wealthy that lies at the mouth of the Kromme River and is about an hour’s drive from Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth). Perhaps its most prominent feature is a network of navigable canals upon which residents have built stunning waterfront homes... all with small boat and jetski moorings. ALSO READ: Rewriting the great SA road trip Last weekend, 21 homeowners on the canals opened their doors – to a limited extent, of course – to the public by hosting 40 top Western Cape wine estates for the sake of local community upliftment and development. So iconic has the event become that tickets are snapped up within an hour of going on sale. At first glance, attendance is quite pricey (R600 for Friday and R700 for Saturday) but the cost includes unlimited tastings and water taxi transport on a flotilla of 46 small boats and barges. Participating wineries included Luddite, Peter Falcke, Durbanville Hills, Graham Beck, Ernie Els, Ken Forrester, Muratie, Kleine Zalze, Antonij Rupert, De Grendel, Mullineux, Raka, Boschendal, Delaire Graaff, Waterford, Lievland and Simonsig. Some of these estates prepare and serve snacks periodically throughout the two days but there are a number of participating restaurants as well as food trucks. The culinary highlight for Rose-Mariè (my partner) and I was a very reasonably priced and more-than-generous bowl of mussels in a delicious white wine, cream and garlic sauce. According to Rotary, “before Water on Wine (WOW), February and March were generally quiet in St Francis. Now, the village sees an influx of visitors, with businesses benefiting from the increased activity. “It is estimated that visitors spent about R4.76 million on accommodation, food and sporting events during the weekend.” Rotary also employed 112 people from Sea Vista township to act as deck and jetty marshals. The atmosphere, even as the days progressed, was festive rather than rowdy. There is a rule of no drinking on boats or jetties, and attendees were not allowed to buy wine to take home. Participating wineries, however, took orders for later delivery... in many cases free of charge anywhere in South Africa, regardless the quantity of wine purchased. Wine on Water was conceptualised as Rotary St Francis’ flagship fundraising event in 2019, but plans to stage it that year were scuppered by Covid. It only saw light of day in 2022, making last weekend’s festivities only the fifth iteration of the event. It is as popular with participating wineries as it is with ticketholders. Several winemakers have told me that it is a “must-attend” event that ranks alongside May’s Stoep Tasting wine weekends in Graaff-Reinet and Nieu-Bethesda. The Graaff-Reinet event is much older than Wine on Water, having first been staged in 2014. Although the two events compare closely in the amount of excitement they generate, their feel is completely different. Wine on Water feels much more restrained and genteel, even though fashion styles varied from summer dresses and high-heels (very impractical when it comes to climbing on and off boats) to shorts and plakkies, which are altogether more typical of this part of the Eastern Cape. While most of the ticketholders were from St Francis (“the Cape”, “the Bay” and “the Port”) as well as surrounding areas such as Humansdorp, Jeffreys Bay, Hankey, Gqeberha and the Langkloof, there was a fair sprinkling of foreign attendees. Rose-Mariè and I encountered tourists from Sweden, Germany, Britain and The Netherlands. The “modern” history of Cape St Francis dates back to 1488 when the bay was encountered by Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias, but few people know that the St Francis Bay canals were the brainchild of a former Zululand sugarcane farmer, Leighton Hulett. Hulett spotted a small advertisement in Farmer’s Weekly in 1954 that read: “FISHERMAN’S PARADISE, lonely and isolated, well-wooded and watered, two miles of private beach, 273 morgen [about 235 hectares] – £1 750”. He later wrote: “Intrigued, I flew to Port Elizabeth the next day and was taken out to Cape St Francis in a battered old army jeep. The need for a four-wheel-drive vehicle was soon obvious, as the last few miles consisted of a sandy track traversing shifting sand dunes and waterlogged swampy ground. “In fact, we had to walk the last miles as the jeep had succumbed to a bog and was left axle-deep in pouring rain. For all of that, it was love at first sight.” A small township consisting of 51 plots was laid out in 1956. For the exchange of a house and a plot, a further 150ha were acquired, bringing in nearly three kilometres of river frontage. Hulett had the vision to build a marina. “An experimental sand pump – our first dredger – was put into operation and the first canal was constructed.” Construction took place between 1960 and 1967, and featured a distinct, strictly controlled architectural style of white walls and thatched roofs, turning the quiet fishing spot into a luxury residential and tourist destination. A fire in November 2012 destroyed 76 homes in St Francis Bay, almost all of them thatched-roofed. While some thatched homes remain on the canals, the majority now feature slate tiles. NOW READ: We took the Ford Ranger Tremor on a Pilanesberg game drive – Here’s what happened