Made-to-measure blinds, roller shutters and awnings for the homesteads, cellar doors and guest cottages strung along the Stellenbosch Wine Route — fitted after a free in-home measure.
Every farm along this route carries the same pattern in some form: an old lime-washed core with small, deep-set windows, and a newer cellar-door or cottage wing built almost entirely of glass. The full range is set out below in the order we usually work through it on a measure — what hangs inside the glass first, then what goes outside it, then how you drive the lot.
Blockout or sunscreen, made to measure for every cellar-door pane and homestead window. On this route the sunscreen version does most of the work — an open weave that drops the glare without pulling the vineyard out of the frame.
Explore roller blinds
Banded sheer-and-solid fabric that tunes light hour by hour without losing the vineyard outlook. Handy in a guest cottage that has to be a bright breakfast room at eight and a dim afternoon room at three.
Ask about day & night blinds
Aluminium or timber slats, the natural fit for the homestead's original deep-set reveal. Tilt does the controlling rather than height, which suits a small, thick-walled window where you want light bounced up onto the ceiling instead of straight across the table.
Explore venetian blinds
Wide stacking doors onto the vines, covered without a single seam line down the middle. The panels track back into a slim stack against the jamb, so the opening you spent the money on is still an opening once the blind is drawn back.
Ask about vertical & panel blinds
Genuine blackout for a guest suite kept for visitors, with a real insulating bonus in a stone-walled room. The trapped air inside each cell slows the heat coming through the glass, which is worth having in a west-facing bedroom in February.
Ask about cellular blinds
Blinds that vanish into the new cellar-door wing's ceiling until the sun swings round. This one has to be planned with the ceiling, so bring us in while the bulkhead is still a drawing rather than after the plasterer has packed up.
Ask about concealed blinds
Fitted to the loft conversions and gable windows other suppliers would rather not quote. Angled and triangular openings need tensioned side channels so the fabric holds its line across the slope instead of sagging away from the glass.
Ask about skylight & shaped blinds
Heat and summer UV stopped at the glass, before either one reaches the tasting room. Catching the sun outside is always the stronger move, and because the slats still tilt you keep the mountain in view while the heat stays on the other side.
Ask about external venetians
Shade over the tasting table, gone again the moment the south-easter picks up. Nothing lands in the paving either — the arms fold back into a cassette on the wall, which matters on a terrace that doubles as a working yard at harvest.
Explore folding-arm awnings
Wind-proof mesh that closes the veranda in without boxing up the view. The fabric edge runs inside an aluminium track on both sides, so it holds itself flat in a gust rather than flapping loose the way a hanging blind does.
Explore zip screens
Sun, glare and total blackout in one motorised system sitting on the outside of the glass.
Shading, not security. These shutters exist to handle the sun, the heat and the glare. A security-rated shutter is another product entirely — ask and we quote it on its own.
Ask about roller shutters
One app, every blind — including the cellar doorway nobody wants to reach with a pole. Timers, sun sensors and wind sensors mean the shading happens on schedule whether or not anyone is on the farm that week.
Ask about motorisation
Glare cut, vineyard held — the argument the whole route is built on.
The Stellenbosch Wine Route was South Africa's first — 11 founding farms, approved in April 1971, the model every other route in the country later copied. Fifty-five years on, it is still a working road network, not a scenic loop, and the homesteads along it carry a pattern we measure for on every visit: an old lime-washed core with small, deep-set windows, and a newer cellar-door or guest-cottage wing built almost entirely of glass.
Banghoek climbs to 720m on the Helshoogte Pass and catches up to 2,000mm of rain a year; Bottelary sits as low as 100m and runs the warmest, driest ward on the route; Devon Valley's small basin traps heat the wind never quite reaches; Simonsberg-Stellenbosch's farms read the mountain directly, morning sun square-on, gone fast by mid-afternoon. We measure each ward for its own numbers, not a single Winelands average.
Under the National Heritage Resources Act, any structure over 60 years old is automatically protected — altering a Cape Dutch gable needs a permit from Heritage Western Cape. The homestead's original small windows take an internal blind that changes nothing visible from outside; the cellar-door or cottage wing built in the last fifteen or twenty years to frame the vineyard carries no such constraint, and is where external shading earns its keep.
This is a winter-rainfall basin — June and July carry the wet season, not a highveld hail calendar. What we design against instead is the south-easter, which builds through spring and summer and typically peaks around five in the afternoon. Every motorised awning or screen on an exposed terrace here carries a wind sensor as standard, not an upsell.
A tasting room's whole argument is the vineyard through the window. Sunscreen roller and day/night banded fabric are the default here for exactly that reason — they cut the glare and the summer UV, which regularly reads 11 to 13 on the extreme scale, without taking the view away the way a blockout roller would.
We measure and fit across the full route, but these four wards each bring a genuinely different brief. Scroll the strip below — or use the arrows — to see how the specification changes stop by stop.
Farms on the lower slope read the mountain directly — square morning sun, gone fast by mid-afternoon.
Explore this ward 02 250–720m · the Helshoogte PassThe highest, wettest ward on the route — up to 2,000mm of rain a year and a pass that funnels the wind.
Explore this ward 03 a small, sheltered basinTucked off the old Paarl road — less wind than the rest of the route, but heat that stays put through the day.
Explore this ward 04 100–412m · the warmest wardOpen, rolling farmland north-west of town — the driest, warmest ward on the route, with little mountain shelter.
Explore this ward
Shade over the tasting table, gone again the moment the south-easter picks up.
The same honest process whether you're fitting one homestead window or every glass pane on a new cellar-door build.
Tell us about the homestead, the cottage or the cellar door, and what's actually bothering you about the light or the heat, through the form or chat.
A consultant visits with samples, measures every opening — the original sash frame and the new glass wing both — and talks through fabric and control options.
A clear, itemised quote per window or door — no surprises, and no pressure to decide on the spot. Before that, a range to plan against: everything on this site falls between R1,000 and R7,500 per square metre installed, a manual interior roller at the low end and a motorised awning over a tasting terrace at the high one. Small openings carry a minimum charge, and only the measure produces a firm figure.
Everything is built to order for your openings, then fitted by hand and left tidy — and we run it through with you before we drive off.
Hardware specified for a working farm, not just a showroom.
Wine Route Blinds measures, makes and fits window shading along the Stellenbosch Wine Route — the Simonsberg and Banghoek roads, Devon Valley and the Bottelary hills. Roller blinds, venetians, zip screens and folding-arm awnings are each built for one opening in one building, whether that is a homestead sash window, a guest cottage or the wide glass of a new cellar-door extension.
The order of a job never changes. Send the enquiry, by form or by chat. One of our expert consultants will contact you shortly to fix a date for the free in-home measure. On site every window and door is measured properly, exposure and fixing substrate are checked, and fabric, mesh openness and control are chosen against the light each opening really gets through the afternoon. A written quote follows, itemised per window or door. Once it is approved the work is made to those sizes, fitted, and demonstrated to you before the team packs up.
Nothing you send is used for anything beyond arranging that call-back, and it is held in line with POPIA.
The measure at the property costs you nothing, and the quote comes back written and priced window by window — nothing owed, nobody pushing.
Fill this in and one of our expert consultants will contact you shortly to arrange your free in-home measure.
A real consultant calls you back to arrange a time that suits your farm or property.
The measure at the property comes first, every time. We will not guess a figure down the phone.
