In the early days of winemaking, before stainless steel, farmers would create underground cooling vaults for their wine. On Weltevrede large areas were dug underground, river stones were brought up from the Breede River by donkey and cart and then cement cisterns were cast. These cisterns would annually be rubbed with molten beeswax to seal each hole and crack and prevent the wine from coming into contact with the raw cement. Since then these cisterns were virtually forgotten.
When you walk through the tunnels, you experience the feeling of generations ago: candlelight, silence, spider webs, the dampness and smell of wine aging, oak barrels and burning wicks.