The Winelands

Finally getting a good day of beautiful weather, we embarked on a trip through wine country with Viv, our host, and her daughter Amy. They very graciously proposed being our designated drivers for the day so we could “fully experience the wine.” (Read: take full advantage of the copious amounts of wine). Three cheers for Viv and Amy!

Driving out of Muizenberg, we cruised down the R310, which takes you along the False Bay coastline on the eastern side of the Cape peninsula. The little two-lane high way winds its way between sand dunes on the edge of collapsing onto the road and the breaking surf, an absolutely magnificent ride. Amy told us that during the apartheid era, many of these beautiful beaches had been ruled colored or black beaches only. This was not only because of proximity to black/colored townships, but also because many of these areas could only be accessed down rocky hills/dunes and have deadly riptides and strong currents. It was a sobering sight to drive through this area with the breathtaking cliffs and beaches out one window and the packed shanty-towns in the townships by the sewage treatment plant on the other.

Going inland, we made our way into wine country going by way of the Strand, a historically Afrikaans neighborhood. Going over some mountains, we arrived at our first winery right off the R310 in Stellenbosch, Vergelegen. Situated on an old Dutch estate, “vergelegen” means “far away,” which this vineyard certainly was from the early Cape Town settlement. Viv and Amy showed us around the estate grounds and the historic mansion of the vineyard founders, fashioned in the traditional Dutch Cape architecture. Kyle was particularly enamored by the little springbok statues all around the gardens. For our first tasting, we tried Vergelegen’s two most famous red and white wines.

Personally, I get rather peeved when people wax poetic about legs and tannins and whatnot. As they ramble their pretentious pants off, I usually fidget about trying to look proper while really thinking in my head “Shut up already and let me drink my wine!” But perhaps that’s just the inner wine-o in me speaking. But wine tasting is an extremely subjective activity; everyone tastes something different in the wine. So, I decided it was time put aside my low-class wine-o tendancies and preference for two-buck Chuck and three dollar André and try something new. Who knows, perhaps we’d become a bit more posh and thus get invited to some more (or any) fancy-schmancy events.

Dave gave us at least a little bit of a wine aficionado air by throwing around some terms like ‘breathing” and “smoky aromas.” Our very helpful wine guide explained how each wine was matured, and had us guess the various smells and flavors we detected in each. We all were giggling a little and looking at each other out of the corners of our eyes, not wanting to be the first to venture a totally off-kilter guess A few finally said “citrus” and “cedar” and “smoke.” I kept my mouth shut because when he had asked what we smelled, I honestly smelled feet and wasn’t about to announce that their wine smelled like a gym locker. Finally, I ventured a guess of mushrooms, a safer word than saying “fungus, namely the ones that grow on feet,” and was awarded by a nod of approval from our wine expert. However, given that he said yes to everything, either he didn’t want to hurt our feelings or our taste buds/smell receptors knew way more than we thought they did. We thoroughly enjoyed our tasting, and after getting over our first instinct to “quaff” (as Viv put it, to throw back) our wine; we learned to hold it on our tongue and bathe our tongues in a glory of fermented grapes.

Next time I crack open a box of Franzia, I will definitely be remembering my newly acquired wine tasting skills.

The rest of our day was spent devouring some bread and cheese on the grounds of another vineyard before dashing off further down the road towards Paarl and the J.C. LeRoux winery. Now J.C. LeRoux, we were informed, was one of the first Frenchman in the area and was one of South Africa’s masters of the “methodé cap classique” which produces what we all dearly call “bubbly” or sparkling wine. (Note: we all call it champagne, but we’ve learned the correct term is sparkling wine unless it actually comes from the area of Champagne in France. Damn French, so picky.) The tour was moderate. They managed to preface every part of their informational video with phrases like “Le Grapes” and “Le music” and the best yet, “Le interesting people.” After the very quick tour where we watched workers loading bottles into the machine to be flash frozen and then recorked, our only comment was “Oh le sigh, where do we get le drunk?” And the fine men and women of the House of J.C. LeRoux did not disappoint as full flutes of sparkling wine after sparkling wine were decanted in front of us as we worked our way from the drier MMC (methodé cap cliassique) wines to the sweeter (and by that I mean molten Jolly Ranchers) sparkling wines. Verdict: There was more to bubbly than we thought. There is also more carbonation in bubbly than I thought and which Kyle discovered when I burped champagne breath loudly in his face.

Oh excuse me, sparkling wine breath. Mon Dieu!

Tired and sleepy, the ever-energetic and enduring (bless them) Viv and Amy drove us over to Franschoek, the French-influenced town in South Africa’s wine country for some sustenance and namely pancakes. Satiated and happy, we drove in the approaching dusk through the mountains back home to Muizenberg, happy, full of wine, and feeling just a little bit more posh than we did this morning.