Brookdale Estate

Style

Wine, dine and unwind

Setting

Paarl of the Cape Winelands

Brookdale Estate epitomises dreaming big. The enormity of the Drakenstein Mountains and Paarl Valley make even this grand Cape Dutch manor seem diminutive. Fynbos, vineyards, orchards, parterre gardens and protected habitats – all carefully replanted by the owner – spool out in all directions, meaning views for all, fine wines on tap and self sustainability. But it's not just the owner’s vision that plays out in Imax size here; let your ambitions run wild (especially if you’ve booked the whole place), with a chef who’ll customise meals, staff who bend over backwards to meet whims and a manor you can make your own, whether you’re helping with the wine harvest, timing-out for tastings, or seeking out elusive lynxes and leopards.

Facilities

Rooms

Six.

Checkout

11am. Earliest check-in, 2pm. Both are flexible, subject to availability, but you’ll need to request this when booking and the hotel will let you know a couple days before your stay.

More Details

Rates include a Continental and cooked breakfast.

Fitness Center

Free Internet Access

Laundry

Pool

On-Site Restaurant

Room Service

At the Hotel

Butler service; living rooms, dining rooms and study; fynbos and gardens (including a kitchen garden); vineyards and wine library; fitness room; charged laundry service; free WiFi. In rooms: Smart TV with Netflix (hidden in the bed frame), Nespresso coffee machine, Smeg kettle and box of Twinings teas, minibar, fresh herbs for tea-making, air-conditioning, bathrobes, Wild Olive bath products. Exclusive-use bookings also get a private chef and villa manager.

Our Favourite Rooms

Rooms all follow a similar pattern: modern, luxurious, comfortable, but with just a slightly different colour accent in each. They’re democratically designed so that there are no second-best views, and we have to concur – each way you look there’s a sight to fall in love with – so your deciding factor has to be whether you’d prefer to stay upstairs in the manor, on the ground floor or in the standalone suite just outside in the grounds for a bit of extra privacy. We’re quite taken with the thought that’s gone into each space: bundles of fresh garden herbs for making teas, local Wild Olive bath products and charging ports that pop up from nightstands so you don’t have to bend over to plug things in. And for that authentic home-from-home feel the owner intended, book out the property and staff in entirety.

Poolside

Even if all 12 guests have checked into the hotel you’d still have elbow room in the large garden-set pool. It’s a cool antidote to Paarl’s sometimes soaring heat, with loungers and parasols set out around a wooden deck and a pool house with changing rooms, a TV and service bar should you get thirsty (although your butler will be happy to top up your glass on request).

Spa

A range of four massages (Swedish, hot-stone, deep-tissue and aromatherapy) and mani-pedis can be carried out in your suite. There’s a small fitness room too.

Packing Tips

Bring unprecious footwear for bombing about the estate and tramping through vineyards. And, no, we’re sorry, you cannot adopt chef Coetzee – he is an adult man and quite happy where he is.

Also

The hotel has an impressive art collection, with works by SA-based artists such as David Thorpe, Katie Miszewski, Junior Fungai and Dominique Salm.

Children

Kids of all ages can stay only if you book Brookdale exclusively, when rollaway beds sleep two under-12s in addition to the 12 guests. Otherwise, kids aged 13 and over can stay. Babysitting is on request and meals can be customised.

Gallery

Food & Drink

Top Table

Staff aim to surprise guests with a new dinner setting each day: one of two dining rooms, in the pool house or pavilion beside the pool, the front porch, helipad…adding a frisson of excitement to evenings.

Dress Code

Go-with-the-flow farm wear by day, and like a fine wine by night: poured into something elegant.

Hotel Restaurant

To allow chef Gary Coetzee’s creativity to flourish, and to customise meals to guests’ tastes and dietary peccadilloes, lunch and dinner menus change daily. Breakfast is a little more set in stone but there’s always a changing special that’ll have you leaping out of bed in anticipation. A passionate and experienced chef, your appetite is in very good hands with Coetzee, who harvests ingredients from the gardens and has very good relations with local farms and suppliers. You might have spinach and ricotta tortellini in a creamy chenin-blanc sauce, Moroccan-spiced lamb in tomato fondue, springbok with butternut purée, or lime nougat with lemongrass curd. And, on request, the kitchen will rustle you up a gourmet picnic.

Hotel Bar

Brookdale Estate’s Mason Road wine collection will be readily available throughout your stay, with a selection that runs from straw-hued chenin to a blushing rosé to a deep dark syrah. And there’s a selection of beers, soft drinks and spirits for the less wine-enthused.

Last Orders

Dining times are loosely set at 8am for breakfast, 12 noon for lunch and 7pm for dinner, but these can be tweaked to suit guests.

Room Service

Snacks and drinks can be brought to your room from 8am to 6pm.

Planes

The nearest travel hub to the hotel is Cape Town International, just an hour’s drive away. Transfers (in various vehicles, including luxury cars) can be arranged on request up to 48 hours in advance of your stay.

Automobiles

Brookdale’s remoteness makes a car very handy, but the whole stay is geared towards lazy retreating until check-out, so you could survive on airport transfers topping and tailing your stay.

Worth Getting Out of Bed For

While not as well known as other wine-rich South African hotspots like Franschhoek and Stellenbosch, undersung Paarl is becoming a siren song for oenophiles and suckers for spectacular views. And, Brookdale Estate – a working vineyard and farm at the foot of the Drakenstein Mountains in the Paarl Valley – has an abundance of both. There’s a kind of crazy paving of terrains at the hotel to explore: gardens manicured into intricate parterre, vines in long flowing lines, fynbos allowed to run wild. The owner put years of work into setting the scene, ripping out alien plants for indigenous ones, sowing lesser-known wine varietals from Portugal and France, nurturing bird habitats and making this an excellent expanse for horse rides, biking (if you’re not bringing your own cycle, ask the hotel in advance to hire some), nature trails (keep your eyes peeled for lynxes, foxes, eagles, flamingoes and porcupines) and guided tours. And there are yet more ways in which the hotel entices you to stay onsite – massages in suites, cookery lessons with chef Coetzee and tastings of Mason Road wines; arrive at harvest time and you can help with picking or even stomping grapes, and join in the winemaking process. Paarl has plenty to offer in the way of entertainment too. Santé Day Spa offers holistic skincare, hydrotherapy healing, vinotherapy and even a labyrinth to keep your mind on its toes too, while Yoga House is the go-to for morning sun salutations. The hotel has partnered up to provide private climbs up Paarl Rock or the Huguenot Peak, or exploring Krom River’s rock pools and kloofs. White-knucklers can take to the skies for paragliding and heli-flips and some nearby vineyards will let you bomb through their estate on a quad bike. While fly-fishing sessions and spins round the elegantly landscaped Pearl Valley Golf Course will reset your heart rate to normal. And there are two important monuments worthy of your time: the Taal Monument, celebrating when Afrikaans became South Africa’s official language in 1975; and the Mandela statue at Klein Drakenstein, where he was released from prison in 1990.

Earn or Redeem Points with World of Hyatt

This Mr & Mrs Smith hotel participates in the World of Hyatt loyalty program. As a member, you can earn and redeem points and enjoy exclusive benefits for qualifying nights. .