(Part two of my South African wine and travel report; click here for part one.)

Although they’ve been widely available in the U.K. and Northern Europe for decades, wines from South Africa are just getting a foothold in the U.S. market. They’re mostly represented at the bargain level by Fairview’s line of inexpensive whites, reds, and rosés called Goats do Roam. (Delicious quaffers, actually; the name is a reference to Fairview’s four-legged secondary agricultural pursuit, as well as a pun on the liquid standard from the south of France, Cotes du Rhone. South African winemakers tend to have an Aussie-like sense of humor.) Several importers, including Cape Classics and Vineyard Brands, are starting to bring more serious ZA cuvees to American shelves.

The situation remains that the best way to immerse oneself in South African wines is to go to the source.

Happily, besides the near-lethal flight, visiting the country’s wine country is a breeze. Ninety percent of the wine lands, as they’re called, are within striking distance of Cape Town. Plus, most of the wineries have been built or rebuilt quite recently with visitors in mind.

The ideal place to stay remains Stellenbosch. Home to the state’s Afrikaans university, it’s what St. Helena is to Napa Valley: manageable in size; cut down the middle by a shady street lined with restaurants, hotels, galleries, and shops; and, if you like Cape Dutch architecture, with its big blank white facades and little windows (pictured above), picturesque. Increasingly popular, too, is Franschhoek (pronounced FRAHN-shook), about a half-hour to the northeast, first settled by French Huguenots and now claimed by a new wave of vanity-label winemakers and spa hounds in search of a good grape-pip body wrap.

Again, Napa-style, most wineries in the area are open daily for tasting and do not require an appointment. The exception are the smallest operations, and especially during harvest. (Boekenhoutskloof, a break-through darling with the American wine press, is one of these.) A majority post a small tasting fee, usually refundable with purchase. A few boast large-scale chateaux surrounded by lavender gardens and fountains. All of them are surrounded by stunning, purple mountains’ majesty.

But, frankly, most spots will exemplify why it is that in South Africa they call them wine farms. Crops other than vinis vinifera will share acreage on the property. Dogs will lounge in the dirt roundabout in front of the owner’s house, right next to the one-room, one picnic-table tasting roost. Often you’ll be the only visitor. One of my favorites of this genre was De Meye Wines (pronounced deh MAY-uh), which lies on an open plateau on the northern edge of Stellenbosch mountain: In the company of two resident retrievers, we tasted some of the best wines of the trip at a rustic picnic table under a tree. The rich black fruit flavors in the shiraz and the cabernet-shiraz blend named Trutina were tinged with interesting, earthy notes, which made the wines distinctive.

Especially if the wine farm is nearby a local township, visitors may have to get buzzed through rather daunting security gates. Which brings me to my final recommendation about wine-touring in South Africa: don’t go it alone. One of the lasting scars of apartheid in South Africa is widespread poverty and crime, and although the wine lands are much safer than Cape Town, it’s still advisable – and luckily very affordable – to hire a guide with a car. Also, because South Africans drive British-style on the left, a guide will save you from getting white knuckled, not to mention lost.

Tune in next week for part three of my South Africa report — including my encounter with the dreaded pinotage.