The valley now known for vineyards was first called Olifantshoek, Elephants' Corner, after the herds that crossed it each season. French Huguenots arrived in 1688, fleeing the revocation of the Edict of Nantes three years earlier, and were granted farms along the Berg River. They named them for the places they had lost: La Motte, La Provence, Cabrière, Bourgogne. Those names survive on labels today, and most Franschhoek Wine Tram Tour From Cape Town tours still call at estates founded within a decade of that first grant. The railway came late. A branch line reached the valley in 1904, hauling fruit and timber over the 75 kilometres to Cape Town until road freight made it redundant. Track was lifted, stations shuttered, and the corridor sat idle for most of a century. In 2012 a restored open-sided tram car returned to a surviving section of that alignment, running from a depot at the corner of Main Road and Cabrière Street. The lines are colour-coded rather than numbered, and each threads a different arc of the Franschhoek wine route. Terroir is the argument for all of it. The valley is a closed amphitheatre, walled on three sides by the Groot Drakenstein and Franschhoek mountains, with the Franschhoek Pass — cut in 1825 by Major Charles Michell along an old elephant path — the only high way out. Cold air drains down those slopes at night, holding acidity in Chardonnay and in the Méthode Cap Classique that Franschhoek producers helped establish as a Cape style. Decomposed granite on the foothills and alluvial sand on the valley floor sit within a few hundred metres of each other. Old Semillon vines, a variety once so widespread at the Cape that growers called it simply green grape, still stand on several properties. The Huguenot Monument at the head of the village, unveiled in 1948, closes the main street with three arches and a figure holding a broken chain. Behind it the Huguenot Memorial Museum keeps the genealogical records that make this one of the most thoroughly documented settler communities in South Africa. A wine tram day trip from Cape Town covers roughly 150 kilometres return, yet the valley it reaches measures barely 12 kilometres end to end. Franschhoek Wine Tram Tour From Cape Town tickets carry a base fare of 350 ZAR; tasting fees are set by each estate, not by the tram.