Franschhoek is famous for its wine route, but many of the wine farms also produce olives and olive oil. When deciding which wine farms to visit, why not choose one of these and spoil yourself with an olive oil and/or olive tasting at the same time? It’s also a great opportunity to purchase some olives and olive oil to take home with you.

This is not an official Franschhoek olive route, merely a list of olive producers in Franschhoek that you can visit. For a broader food experience, look at the Franschhoek Artisan Food Route, which includes many of these producers.

Babylonstoren

This estate is famous for its enormous and amazing food garden which supplies the equally impressive restaurant called Babel. This estate is technically part of the Paarl region, but if you’re going to Franschhoek via the N1, you will probably drive past it so we’re including it in our Franschhoek Olive Route. You’d have to take a serious detour if you wanted to visit it en route to Paarl!

Babylonstoren is a newcomer to the olive oil scene, producing their first oil in 2014. But they are taking it seriously and apart from planting a lot of new olive orchards, they have invested in a shiny new oil pressing machine. They are offering single variety olive oil tastings as an option when doing a wine tasting. This is a very interesting thing to do and helps one understand the flavours of the different varieties of olives used in oils.

You need to book months in advance to get a table in the restaurant, but don’t forget they also have The Green House offering light meals for breakfast and lunch 7 days a week. If you feel like spoiling yourself, you could use the spa or even book yourself one of the stunning rooms and stay over.