Coffee and craft beer

Wine understandably dominates the conversation around Cape Town’s drinks scene, but it isn’t the whole story. The city has a genuinely developed independent coffee roasting culture, and craft beer has established a real, if smaller, foothold both in the city and out in the Winelands themselves. Neither needs to compete with a wine-focused itinerary — both slot naturally alongside it.

Coffee	Imported beans, strong local roasting and café culture
Craft beer	A growing scene in the city, extending into Franschhoek
Time needed	A morning for coffee, an afternoon or evening stop for beer
Best for	Rounding out a Winelands or city food day beyond wine alone

Coffee: imported beans, local craft

South Africa’s own climate doesn’t generally suit coffee growing at commercial scale, so the beans behind Cape Town’s coffee scene are imported, typically from elsewhere in Africa and further afield. What’s genuinely local, and genuinely worth seeking out, is the roasting and café culture built around that imported green coffee — independent roasters across the city have developed real expertise, and the resulting café scene is a legitimate strength of Cape Town’s food and drink offering, not an afterthought next to wine.

This African School of Coffee masterclass series is the most direct way to engage with that expertise properly — a hands-on session covering roasting, brewing, and tasting run by people who actually work in the craft, rather than a passive café visit.

Craft beer, in the city and beyond

Cape Town’s craft beer scene doesn’t carry the same international reputation as its wine, but it’s a real and growing category with several genuinely well-regarded breweries, both within the city and extending out into the Winelands itself. Franschhoek, best known for wine, is also home to an established craft brewery, which makes it entirely possible to build a Winelands day that includes a beer tasting alongside its wine stops rather than treating the two as separate trips requiring separate visits.

This craft beer tasting covering Spice Route and Franschhoek is a practical way to combine a beer-focused stop with time in the Winelands, useful if a full day of wine tasting alone feels like too much of one thing.

A third option: craft chocolate

Alongside coffee and beer, Cape Town also has a small but genuine craft chocolate scene, working bean-to-bar rather than simply melting and remoulding imported chocolate — a similar story to the city’s coffee roasters in that the raw material is imported but the craft is local.

The Afrikoa bean-to-bar chocolate experience is worth including if you want to round out a day of tastings with something beyond the standard wine-coffee-beer trio, and it pairs naturally with either a coffee or wine-focused itinerary as a change of pace.

Fitting it around a Winelands day

None of this needs to compete with wine for time — a coffee masterclass fits naturally into a morning before heading out to the Winelands, and a craft beer stop works well as a change of pace partway through or at the end of a wine-focused day, particularly in Franschhoek where both wine and beer sit close together.

This essential food and drink tour is a good broader option if you’d rather sample a mix of the city’s food and drink traditions, coffee and beer included, in a single guided outing rather than planning separate themed stops.

Where the coffee culture is strongest

Independent roasters and specialty cafés are concentrated in the City Bowl and surrounding central neighbourhoods, where a genuinely competitive scene has developed over recent years — enough choice that it’s worth treating a coffee stop as a deliberate part of a day’s plan rather than whatever’s nearest when you need caffeine. Quality and attention to brewing method here tend to be considerably higher than a casual hotel or chain coffee shop.

Practical notes on timing

Coffee roasters and specialty cafés generally keep daytime hours, making them a natural morning or early-afternoon stop, while craft breweries follow more typical bar and restaurant hours, better suited to a late-afternoon or evening visit. Planning a day around both means treating coffee as a start-of-day activity and beer as an end-of-day one, rather than trying to fit both into the same short window.