About Chenin

Chenin started with a trip to Stellenbosch and a question: why is it so hard to figure out which wineries to visit?

Not because information is scarce—because it's everywhere and nowhere useful. You're hopping between a tourism site, Google Maps, a 2019 blog post, a winery website that won't load. Halfway through, you've forgotten why you were excited.

We built what we wanted to use ourselves.

The filter for what gets in: is the wine worth visiting for?

That's the only inclusion criterion. Not "nice venue" or "Instagrammable setting" or "family-friendly." Stellenbosch has over 600 wineries. Most are perfectly pleasant places to drink perfectly acceptable wine. We're not cataloguing the region. We're curating it based on one criterion: is the wine worth visiting for?

The work we do once they're in: make planning feel like exploring.

Every winery has what you actually need. Whether they serve food. What's nearby. How to book. The stuff that's usually buried or missing entirely.

Want to find somewhere for lunch between two tastings you've already picked? You can do that. Want to start from a winery you've heard of and see what's close? That works too. The point is to stay curious instead of becoming a logistics coordinator.

The name Chenin

South Africans called it "Steen" for three hundred years and assumed it was a local grape. It wasn't until 1963 that a Stellenbosch professor compared the leaves and realised: Steen was Chenin Blanc all along. We liked the idea of something hiding in plain sight.

Get in touch

Questions, feedback, or recommendations for wineries we should consider? Email us at cheers@trychenin.com.