Leeu Passant Winery — Attraction in Stellenbosch Local Municipality

Prefacing this with saying the staff and grounds are wonderful. I’ve walked away deciding never to purchase their wines again though.

I have been buying them (about two cases per year) since 2016. I came in to visit and brought a group from Europe as part of a wine trip to the Cape which I organised, I told them about the amazing wines the Mullineauxs made so they were quite excited to visit the tasting room.

We all tried the single terroir Shiraz (R330 per person for three small tasting portions). I asked them about the Chardonnay and found an old photo of a Chardonnay I had loved from a few years ago, explaining that I would be grateful if I could pay for a glass to try as that was the wine I wanted to buy from them.

They explained that they never give out samples and we would have to pay for a full flight of 8 wines to try the Chardonnay. I explained that I was visiting four farms a day on this trip and couldn’t go through another 8 wines. Other farms with equally in demand wines will show much more discretion when engaging with clients.

I have seen other farms and winemakers be extremely engaging and generous with their time, whereas the experience at this tasting room is that no matter whether you have been loyal to the brand and supported them for years they don’t really care and will not show any loyalty back to their customer base. Obviously they’re not really trying to sell wines to locals but cash in on foreign markets and foreign visitors - which is fine and they are a business after all. They lost sales to us though because my guests rather bought from the farms which engaged with them in a personal way. This all dampens the pretence of a luxury hospitality brand.

I just don’t think that pouring a shot of Chardonnay to taste the new vintage is an excessive ask when we supported the brand since the beginning especially over Covid.

There are many other winemakers and vineyards in the area that are much more interested in creating personal connections with their visitors. This is not...

I saw the wines of Mullineux on the wine menus of Le Maufoux in Chablis and Caves Legrand in Paris, and was really looking forward to visiting here.

With a group of eight, we booked both the Mullineux Single Terroir and Leeu Passant wine tasting. The 2021 Syrah and 2022 Chenin Blanc were all unbalanced in some way (astringent or tart). The Iron Chenin Blanc was not present, and we were not given any reason why. Albeit, they were good and complex expressions of terroir, had great length, and showed great potential for ageing. The winemaker really demonstrates her exceptional wine making here.

So my complaint is not about the wine, but about the unfortunate and unpleasant attitude of our tasting room host, who was cold and bitter throughout.

We had lunch at the Estate's The Dining Room and, while the lunch and setting was delightful, they took much too long to serve our dishes. So we arrived at the tasting room just before 4pm. On arrival, our host pointed out that they would be closing within the hour. One hour, nine wines. We've done this many a time. We finished around an hour, and even bought some wines, but sadly the wines weren't given enough time to open up.

But I don't know why our host kept pushing us to finish. Although there were other guests still around, she pushed the point three times. On the third time, I became a little upset and had to speak up before...

Almost comfortable and slightly pretentious, medium-sized tasting room environment. This is one of the only wineries in all of the Cape winelands that makes you ask for a bottle price list, but not the only one that requires a booking (which you can most likely make at the entry gate).

First let me say that the grounds are stunning.

Three tasting options: two R120 and a third R300 for single origin wines. The latter is only offered for eight tastings a day and usually only available if you reserve it. We were also able to taste two single origin 2015 syrah vintages ("Granite" and "Schist") for R60 (!!!) each. The focus here is mainly expensive wine sourced from Swartland grapes.

If you really enjoy the best that SA wine has to offer then please look elsewhere. The tastings and bottle prices are expensive by almost any comparison and almost none of the wine is ready to enjoy now. We liked the R640 chardonnay the best, but at that price we can pick up excellent bottles back home.

If you want to feel "exclusive" then come here and buy up the R900+ bottles of "lay down and forget" red wine. Otherwise, skip this and go almost anywhere else. The extraordinary bottle prices here clearly help finance the five star Leeu real estate around...