Touring the Western Cape Wine Country

First off, Leslie and I both had way too much wine to drink last night. Not the brightest thing to do the night before heading out for wine tasting. Crazily enough, sipping wine samples happens to be the last thing we wanted to do. We ate at a great northern Italian restaurant called Kerrum 95, and ate a full three course meal - with each dish bigger than the last. No way we could eat all the food (I had a caprese salad, gnocchi with gorganzola, and osso buco), but we found a way to drink 2 bottles of Sauvignon Blanc (that doesn't include the 500ml bottle we raided from the mini-bar before we went out, nor does it include the drink we had at our hotel's bar afterwards...ugh).

Too Much wine last night!

 

After waking up twice in the night (damned jet lag), we finally awoke at sunrise - which is around 8am here at this time of the year). After a light breakfast, we met up with Tony, our tour guide from yesterday, and headed out under partly cloudy skies west across the Cape flats, past the airport, and into the mountains of wine country.

It's hard to describe the beauty of this area.  It's breathtaking, and my photos can't do it justice. To paraphrase Jodi Foster from the movie Contact, "they should have sent a poet." It's got the vineyards of Napa, the geography of the Canadian Rockies, the drama of Kauai's northshore and the flora/fauna of subtropical Mexico. It's lush. It's inviting. It's extremely large geographically.

Our first stop wasn't for wine tasting; rather it was just to admire the Dutch architecture of some National Heritage Site wine farm, the name of which escapes me.

Leslie and some Dutchness



Classic Dutch Architecture

Our second stop was the Dutch/Africaans city of Stellenbosch, the most popular and visited city in the wine country. Home to the largest Africaans university, it was also the location of the first winemaker we visited. Apparently, a famouse South African golfer named Ernie Els, but is better known by the moniker 'Big Easy,' started his own winemaking and restaurant in Stellenbosch. We stopped there and tried out a couple of Sauvignon Blancs, a Rose and a Pinot Grigio (we aren't much of red wine drinkers...I know that's blasphemy to some - my apologies).



Linda Presented our Wines at Big Easy

Beautiful Leslie at the Big Easy

Mr. Double Chin at the Big Easy

At this point, the skies had completely opened up - it was sunny one moment then raining the next.  Jumped in the car and made our way towards the town of Franschhoek (I'm really sick of these Dutch names). First, however, we stopped at the Delaire Graff winery. Here we got a great story. At some point in the past, a huge swath of land was available for sale by a farmer who wasn't making money off the land any longer, but who also didn't realize the value of the land's magnificent vistas.

View from the Delaire Graff Winery

The founder of Graff diamonds bought the place up, and pumped $50mm USD into creating a world class restaurant, winery and visitor's center. The place was truly magnificent; a beautiful, modern mountai retreat. I guess the interesting thing is next to De Beers, Graff Diamonds is like pure evil in the diamond industry. Maybe I just made that up; I can't actually remember most of the details of the story (remember, I was hungover).

The wines, however, were just average. Apparently, that's the take on the restaurant as well. Opulent surroundings, but mediocre food. Not that we ate there, though.



Leslie and I at the Graff Winery

Ok, It's almost 7pm, and I'm still queasy from my hangover, and I'm getting too tired to write much longer. Leslie was getting car sick and we ended up cutting our trip short by an hour, missing out on the opportunity to tastes some bubbly. Long story short - great day out. I'll let my photos do the talking from here at. :)