Drakensteinpiek

An early night predictably means an early waking. Load-shedding is in effect from 06:30 and 08:30, and the room is already warming up. Happily, we’re not heading out till 09:30, so have time for a shower after the A/C is back on.

We’re spending a day with Eon - our good friend who drove us around the winelands on our last visit. He commented then that he’d wished he wasn’t driving, as it would’ve been much more fun to be tasting with us. 5 years later, here we are - and he’s planned a fabulous day of behind the scenes wine experiences for us. We start at the Anthonij Rupert estate, producers of a high-end range of wines on the outskirts of Franschhoek. The estate is stunning - lush green gardens, a Cape Dutch manor house, and a beautiful terrace where we’ll taste our wines. We start with a glass of a rosé MCC sparking wine to freshen our palates. MCC is Methode Cap Classique, and means the wine has been made in the traditional Champagne method - consisting of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. For our tasting, we have 4 different sparklers, and 3 different reds. A couple of the sparkling wines are sensational - the reds, perhaps even better. They’re at an excellent range of price points as well. As a special treat, we’re poured a couple of extra red wines - their Cabernet Franc, and their flagship red blend. Both are eye-poppingly good. The red blend retails at £60 in South Africa, making it a seriously premium bottle. In the UK, you’ll pay North of £100.

The sun is starting to beat down. The temperature is predicted to hit 39C/40C later today. The van we’re being driven in is beautifully chilled. We take a drive over into the Stellenbosch valley. We arrive at Kanonkop, one of the oldest vineyards in South Africa. They are masters of the Pinotage grape, the incredibly South African hybrid of the Pinot Noir and Cinsault grapes created in the early 20th century. Bad Pinotage is BAD. Good Pinotage can be great. We’re hopeful of the latter during our tasting… We’re having a private tasting in the winery’s art gallery with the lovely Heidi. She’s a story-teller, and we spend a fantastic hour listening and learning, all the while tasting the estate’s greatest hits. There’s a rosé that retails for all of about £3.50, all the way through to an ultra premium Pinotage made from the very oldest Pinotage grapes on the farm. As vines get older, they produce less fruit, but that fruit is super concentrated, and can make wines that are stellar, as in this case. We have a vertical tasting of the estate Kanonkop Pinotage - from the 2014 and 2021 vintages, allowing us to see how the wine matures over time. It’s such a treat. As we go to leave the tasting room, I comment that I’ve tried their Paul Sauer blend, so we’re poured a couple of extra glasses of this, and their estate Cabernet Sauvignon. We feel very fortunate.

About 200m up the road is the Warwick estate, a producer whose wines have started to pop up more regularly in the UK in the past few years. As we park up, Eon recommends we pop on some sunscreen, as we’re heading off on a wine safari (!?). We acquiesce, and climb aboard a Land-Rover safari truck with Jaap, an old friend of Eon’s. He takes us on a tour of the estate, giving us a fascinating insight into the strategy and planning that goes into deciding what wines the estate will produce. We pull to a halt at the highest point of the estate, and stop for a glass of rosé sparkling wine. The views across the valley are stunning. Hazy, due to the countless wildfires in the region, but somehow all the more spell-binding as a result.

Back at the estate tasting room, Jaap takes us on a jaunt through Warwick’s premium wines. Their range includes a staggeringly good Chardonnay, and some brilliant red blends. We’re vaguely conscious that we’ve had a lot more wine than we normally would have by 13:00, without breakfast. Happily, Eon has arranged for us to have a picnic in the Warwick estate grounds. We pick a bottle of that Chardonnay to accompany our lunch, and dig in. The picnic is amazing - great sandwiches, a range of local pâtés, beautiful salads… It’s a wonderful way to spend time. We struggle to finish our picnic, so it’s packed up for us to take home for dinner later. The heat is crushing, so we elect to head back to our guesthouse and cool down. It’s been a real treat to hang out with Eon. He’s such fun, and so utterly knowledgeable about the winelands. We’ll hopefully see him for a quick beer on Saturday before we head home.

We’re back at our guesthouse around 17:00. We both decide a nap is in order, and end up sleeping for nearly 2 hours. We’re then awake for a little over 2 hours, before we decide that it’s bedtime. Honestly, we’ve had a very tough day…Читать далее