Right now in Cape Town it is about 6:30 PM as I am writing this, and Jen is sleeping away as she has been since about halfway back from the wine tour today. The reason? We drank rather a large amount of wine today… more than I have ever had in one day before!
The thing about wine tastings that makes them more endurable… is that you are supposed to spit the wine back out again, even if you do like the wine, and especially if you don’t like the wine. Well… I’ve never understood the point of that, and neither has Jen. This leads to a concern when visiting three, four, maybe five wineries in a day and being offered between 4-7 wines at each location. To her credit, Jen has skills at holding her liquor, she’s just not quite on my same level! More to come on that.
Today started off meeting our tour guide, Roger, who asked in a confused tone if we had requested a private tour. Upon learning we had not, he explained that it was rather odd, but that Jen and I were the only two, so we got a sedan for transport, and just the two of us for passengers. This worked all the better in our minds, and we spent the first hour in transit as Roger told us about the sites on the way to the wine country here. They refer to it as “The Winelands”, and it incorporates may surrounding cities and smaller subdivisions with over 300 total vineyards. Actually they don’t call them vineyards here, but I don’t remember the right word, maybe once Jen wakes up she can fill me in, but no promises there! (I did, they are called “Wine Estates”!) Our first stop was a wine and cheese pairing, the first of two, and we stopped at Anura Vineyards. The tasting consisted of six wines, three white wines and three red wines, and six corresponding cheeses as well as some sauces for them. The sauces were amazing, all made on site. The wines were good, as were the cheeses, and everything was locally grown except for the milk to grow the cheese, which had to be purchased externally according to our server. We tried a few, and I left with a bottle of red wine and two bottles of jalapeno plum jam (which is fantastic). We lost one in transit later (glass jars 🙁 ), but oddly not because of intoxication. Back in the car, Roger seemed surprised by my purchase, and said that he wasn’t a fan of this vineyard…
Jen pressed him, and as it turned out he didn’t have a lot of faith in any of the wineries that had cheese-pairings as well. He said they were a gimmick, and that the wine wasn’t very good where offers of free cheese accompanied. We asked for some better options, and I don’t know if it was the good conversation, our ability to persuade, or perhaps just what he told every guest in his tours to goad them into tips, but Roger absolutely delivered.
From the first vineyard, where the wine was okay, but not amazing, we went to (of all places!) La Motte Vineyard for our next stop. The location was both elegant and sprawling, and the staff there provided us some great examples of their wines. I left with two bottles… and swore they would be the last I bought today. To our knowledge we could only carry two bottles in our luggage, and we are planning ahead to the game reserve we fly into tomorrow. There is no surrounding options, so we will be effectively stuck at the reserve when we are not out taking pictures, and may need some drinking options. To say the least, we picked up a few, and after a few photos with the La Motte name given how close it was to my own we headed out towards a town where our guide promised we would take a short stroll through town before heading off to lunch.
Roger dropped us off by a statue on one end of the small shopping strip, and then told us he would meet us at the other end. We understood that he wanted us to see the town, and did stop for a few pictures, but none of the stops caught our eye, and after looking at shipping prices for wine at La Motte, we knew that it wouldn’t be practical to purchase some of the large-item purchases that did attract our attention there. We strolled through quickly, stopped by a chocolate shop, and surprised Roger back at his car in around 20 minutes, about half the time he expected. We took this to mean we could ease in a longer lunch, and Roger delivered here, too.
A sign for the library in the small town
Who doesn’t love bacon?!?
We had heard that the Winelands offered great lunches at the wineries, and Roger took us to one where the restaurant was literally a cave in the side of a hill. The name escapes me right now but I have it in pictures and will share it once I get the technical concerns there figured out (hoping to do this tonight finally), but the food was imaginative and delicious. We both ordered a sesame seed tuna meal, and it was quite good! On a bed of cous-cous that I’m pretty sure was delivered right from heaven and surrounded by asparagus and spices, I couldn’t wait to jump in and enjoyed it very much. Dessert was also fantastic and consisted of different, small items as well as truffles and creme brulee. The presentation was exquisite and the pictures will show you all of that as well. Once again our tour guide had picked one of the best places he could think of, and he continued to do so.
After lunch, a trip through wine country as we pursued our next two wineries, Tokara being the next closest. We meandered through Stellenbosch, which is also one of the college towns here (talk about a party college… the home of African wine!), and then headed onto the Tokara winery. I was extremely impressed with the presentation in Tokara, to some degree it felt like the building designers took into account the nature outside when building the sights and displays inside. It was fantastic, and once again after trying a few different wines I ended up walking out with a bottle, this time a dessert wine that tastes a bit like syrup (delicious, alcoholic apple syrup), we left four our last destination, and Jen was showing signs that the wine was beginning to take effect. We climbed in to our sedan, and headed for our last destination of the day.
I’m remiss in that I do not remember the last place we went today, but I think both Jen and I, and our driver, knew we were pretty much done. Roger introduced us to the next staff by saying “they’re pretty much wined-out”, and asking if we could try the sparkling and perhaps the port, but we didn’t really make it too far there either. A few sparkling wines and one dessert wine later, we were saying our thank-you’s and heading out the door to the hotel. Jen fell asleep in the car on the way back, and has been in some stage of sleeping ever since. Don’t worry, she’s perfectly safe, I think perhaps the wine was just a bit much!
Tomorrow we begin our travels deeper into Africa, beginning with an early flight to Port Elizabeth before flying to a private game reserve where we have been informed there will most likely not be internet service. With that in mind I may have plenty of time to find out how to shrink pictures on my tablet (GIMP is an option, but downloads 270MB of data immediately and that’s too much for this hotel’s per-diem), and then I can upload some once we’re back in a serviced area. We are at the reserve for four nights, i believe, before heading of again, so this may be the last update for a while. Wish us luck that the wine makes it through security okay, and that we don’t have to fight the lions for it! We’ll see how it all pans out!
