Delaire Graff Estate

Delaire Graff has seventeen places to sleep and eighteen swimming pools. Each of the sixteen lodges has a heated pool of its own, the four-bedroom Owner's Villa has an infinity pool, and the shared one, at the spa, runs 22 metres and looks over the villa's roof to Table Mountain. The estate sits at the top of the Helshoogte Pass, between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek, and Pierre Bories's lodges, opened in 2009, are long and low under thatch or timber, with pale pillars and glass walls that open onto the deck. Some 400 works from Laurence Graff's collection are spread through the lodges and gardens, from a bronze cheetah in the long grass to Tretchikoff's Chinese Girl, the woman with the blue-green face, whose prints were among the best-selling of the twentieth century. Graff paid £982,050 for the original in 2013. He is chairman of Graff Diamonds, so the estate has a jewellery boutique too, for anyone the room rate has not slowed down.

Recommended for couples, and for a family happy to take two Superior Lodges with the door open between them, and to do without a kids club. Book a Luxury Lodge for Table Mountain in view; the Garden Lodges look into their own greenery. Hōseki, the Japanese restaurant, is the one reviewers rank among South Africa's best, and the Delaire Graff Restaurant has a terrace over the vines. Between meals there are tastings in the estate's gravity-fed winery and tours of the art, and there is the view over vineyards and mountains, which guests praise. Stellenbosch is about 6 km down the pass, Franschhoek 20 minutes over it. For a second opinion on the wine, Tokara is across the road.