One of the first things anybody says when they find out that I've moved to Stellenbosch is "Oh, we must come do a wine route!". There are, indeed, a huge amount of wine farms in the area. Well, a week ago, when I went down to Capetown, I decided to take matters into my own hands, and invite everybody I saw to come do a wine route. The date set was this last weekend, Saturday the 23rd of April.
At one stage, the number of people coming reached seventeen, which worried me somewhat, but the final entrants were: the Morreira sisters (Shannon and Kirsten), Chris Robson, Pippa van Straaten, myself, Jeremy Alcock, and Cathy Irwin and a friend of hers joined us later. There was some strife about transport - Pippa lives on Robben Island, and it was not easy to get her out to Stellenbosch, but we managed in the end.
We visited L'Avenir, Muratie, and Uitkyk.
L'Avenir was pleasant, although Chris made the faux-pas of asking to taste the very same wine that he had just tasted - this lost us the good will of the helper, and she was rather cold to us after that. This did not affect Jeremy, who rather liked the Cabernet Sauvignon 2004, and desired to buy a bottle. He discovered that the wine had not been "released" (it's like being published, but it's not a book) yet. When he enquired, the manager came down and released the wine then and there - Jeremy bought the first bottle of the stuff! Oh, they also had dogs that looked like pigs and ate corks.
Muratie was fairly pleasant, it had a nice homely feel about it - it looked like they had specially trained spiders to spin the cobwebs to give it atmosphere. They had port as well (or "fortified wine"). We were quite disturbed when we got there to find a fowl (a pheasant or something? It was large and white. Could've just been a chicken, actually) lying on its back with feathers all around it, looking very unwell. We figured it had been mauled or something - not nice at all. We alerted the lad behind the counter, and he came out to see. After standing around it scratching his head for a bit, he prodded it with his foot, and then turned it over, so it wasn't lying on its back any more. At this stage, it ran off into the bushes looking ruffled. Apparently the dratted thing was merely drunk.
We moved on to Uitkyk, after a minor altercation about whether it was "Uitkyk" or "Uitkyks", which ended with Kirsten's map being torn. We tried hard to pay the lad behind the counter, but he kept dismissing us with waves of his hand. The wine was fairly nice, although we did have to endure a good seven minutes of organic chemistry when we asked about the taste. We finished with some brandy, and then thought we'd try Le Bonheur, but when we got there, it was shut. At this stage, we moved back into Stellenbosch, had some late lunch/early supper, and went out - Shannon was desperate to have a drink at the fabulously named Mystic Boer. After an enjoyable evening, we ended up back at my house, drinking hot toddies and watching Pink Floyd, and passing out on the floor.
It was a very enjoyable weekend, and we've all mumbled about doing it again Real Soon Now.
