The Ultimate Wine Tour

He is the son of an Italian-Austrian who ranched cattle in Kenya's Rift Valley. She is the daughter of a South African sugar-cane farmer. While John and Erica Platter were not actually born into South Africa's 300-year-old viticulture industry, they have nonetheless become the foremost ambassadors of the country's wine.

The Platters' annual South African wine guide was first published in 1979. The 2003 edition is 520 pages thick, and required reading among the sundowner-sipping svelte of the veldt. Now, after what they describe as "a year, or two, of drinking dangerously" the couple have completed a safari...