On 22 April, the Four Seasons Hotel The Westcliff, Johannesburg, welcomes Babylonstoren to the table for the first of four exclusive seasonal dinners: a year-long partnership that will celebrate one of the Cape’s most storied farms across every turn of the calendar.
Babylonstoren is one of the oldest Cape Dutch farms in the country, set at the foot of the Simonsberg in the Franschhoek valley. What has been nurtured there over centuries is something increasingly rare: a working farm of extraordinary botanical diversity, where the kitchen follows the garden, the garden follows the season, and nothing arrives at the table before its time.
Each of the four special dinners will be shaped entirely by what the farm and its cellar offer at that precise moment in the season, with produce harvested directly from Babylonstoren’s celebrated garden and wines selected by cellar master Klaas Stoffberg to reflect the very best of his cellar at that time of year. The result is a series of evenings that, by their very nature, could not be repeated at any other time.
“Babylonstoren has always held a special place for me,” says Chef Rudi Liebenberg, Executive Chef, Four Seasons Hotel The Westcliff. “There is something about walking slowly through those gardens that brings you back to what cooking is truly about: the season, what is ready, and the honesty of working with what the land gives you at that moment. “To bring that philosophy to our table at The Westcliff, alongside their wines and produce, is an opportunity I have been looking forward to enormously.”
The first dinner opens in autumn: the season of the olive, a thread that runs quietly and deliberately through every course that follows. Guests arrive to canapés rooted in the farm’s own harvest — among them an oyster with Babylonstoren’s Coratina extra virgin olive oil — alongside a first pour of Sprankel, the farm’s celebrated Cap Classique.The menu moves through a trout mi cuit, a ricotta agnolotti with Babylonstoren sundried tomato and olive crumb, and a fire-roasted beef rump with a beef cheek and truffle bone marrow pithivier, each course perfectly paired to wines from the cellar.
It is a menu that could only exist at this moment in the season, and that is entirely the point. “It is an honour to bring Babylonstoren’s wines to a Johannesburg table, especially at the Four Seasons,” says Klaas Stoffberg, Cellar Master, Babylonstoren. “The wines are a direct expression of our Simonsberg terroir and the season in which they were made. We work with 14 grape varieties across the farm, from Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc to Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon, each shaped by its specific site and conditions.
“For these dinners, the selection is guided by what is showing best in the cellar at that moment, offering guests a true sense of place through wines that remain deeply rooted in their origin.” Following the autumn dinner, the Babylonstoren series will continue through the year with winter, spring and summer editions, each curated entirely around what the farm and its cellar offer in that season.
Dates for the diary: 25 June 2026, 23 September 2026, 3 December 2026. Guests who attend all four will experience something genuinely singular: Babylonstoren across an entire year, at one of Johannesburg’s most prestigious addresses. This evening is the second in The Westcliff’s broader series of intimate producer dinners, each a partnership with a South African wine and food producer of exceptional standing. The Atlas Swift winemaker evening in March opened the series. Babylonstoren, across four seasons, defines it.
Places are strictly limited. Reservations can be made via the Dineplan link or at reservations.johannesburg@fourseasons.com.
R1 750 per person, inclusive of wines and gratuity.
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