Liz Biden built a six-bedroom private villa on the grounds of her hotel La Residence and called it "a house." That takes confidence. We are not surprised.
Franschhoek House opened in December 2024 on the 30-acre La Residence estate in the Franschhoek Valley, surrounded by vineyards and framed by the Drakenstein and Groot Drakenstein mountains on three sides.
The Western Cape summer light here is long and warm, the kind that turns stone walls golden by late afternoon and makes sitting outside with a glass of something from the valley feel like the only sensible plan. At 880 square metres across six individually designed suites, it sleeps up to twelve guests.
The Space
The Long Room, La Residence
The centrepiece is The Long Room, an open-plan space that works as lounge, dining hall, bar, and games room (complete with a full-size billiard table). The design leans maximalist: imported silks alongside local tapestries, crystal chandeliers hanging above a room that looks out onto vineyards, and a 17th-century tapestry by David Teniers II from Aubusson, France. It's a lot for a wine valley farmstead. But the mix of European grandeur and South African warmth gives the room a character that a minimalist approach never could.
The walls are hung with works by African artists, and each of the six suites has its own colour palette and personality. Worth saying that the details here are not subtle. If the group includes someone who photographs every room they stay in, this house will keep them occupied for a while.
Outside: a heated pool, multiple patios and verandahs, and the Franschhoek Valley as the backdrop to all of it.
What's Included
There are private villas all over the Franschhoek Valley. Some are beautiful. Some are well-maintained. What most of them lack is a full-service team.
Franschhoek House comes with a private chef, a dedicated host, and an interactive kitchen where guests can get involved in meal preparation or simply park themselves at the counter with a glass of Chenin Blanc and watch someone who knows their way around a deboning knife do the work.
Guests also get full access to La Residence's amenities: fitness centre, library, boutique, and spa treatment room, plus the option to book into La Residence's dining experiences, from lunch on the Loggia to the six-course Chef's Table with Executive Chef Cheslin.
This is the difference between renting a house and booking one that happens to sit on a five-star hotel estate. One gives guests a roof over their heads. The other gives them a five-star hotel at the end of the garden path. If someone in the group wants a spa morning while the rest head into town, that's handled. The infrastructure is invisible until it's needed, and then it's everything.
The Location
The private chef at work in Franschhoek House's interactive kitchen
The exclusive dinners are the centrepiece of most evenings at Franschhoek House, and rightly so. But the valley outside the gates is no slouch either. Franschhoek's restaurant scene is, we'd argue, the strongest in South Africa: La Petite Colombe, Chefs Warehouse at Maison, Le Coin Français, Épice, Reuben's. The estate is close enough to town that a long lunch out and dinner back at the house never feels like logistics.
For wine, the estate sits in South Africa's densest fine-wine corridor. La Residence itself is surrounded by vines. Guests can walk the grounds with a glass before dinner, or the host can arrange cellar visits at nearby estates along the Franschhoek wine route. The Franschhoek Wine Tram is also nearby for those who want a more structured tasting route (and a designated driver, which is to say, a tram).
Sundowners on the La Residence estate, Franschhoek Valley
Who Is This For?
Groups of 8-12 guests who want to be together without being on top of each other.
Multi-generational families where the grandparents want silence by the pool at seven in the morning and the teenagers want the games room at eleven at night. Celebrations where everyone needs their own suite but nobody wants to be more than a hallway apart. Reunions where the shared meals are the point and the private suites are the pressure valve.
