The Wine Tram is how most visitors move between Franschhoek wine estates without driving. You choose one of five colour lines and hop on and off along it at your own pace. Which estates you can reach depends entirely on the line you pick.
The Franschhoek Wine Tram runs a hop-on hop-off service between wine estates in the Franschhoek valley, using a combination of trams and tram-buses. There are five routes, each identified by a colour, and departures leave from either the Franschhoek terminal or the Groot Drakenstein terminal depending on which line you have chosen.
The lines are the thing to understand before booking. Each one serves a different set of estates and none of them covers the valley entirely, so choosing a line is effectively choosing your day. It is worth working backwards from the farms you actually want to see rather than picking a colour and finding out where it goes.
On the standard hop-on hop-off ticket the tram is transport and nothing more. The operator puts it plainly: tastings and meals are optional extras you decide on as you go. The curated and specialty experiences are sold separately and do include tastings and meals in the price.
Allow at least three hours for the experience, and arrive at your departure terminal 10 to 15 minutes before the scheduled departure time. Late arrivals cannot be accommodated. Between mid-May and mid-September, only certain lines operate on weekdays.
Highlights
- Hop-on hop-off between Franschhoek wine estates, with no driving
- Five colour-coded routes, each serving a different set of estates
- Departures from either the Franschhoek or the Groot Drakenstein terminal, depending on the line
- Allow at least three hours