Constantia, South Africa
Yesterday we spent most of the day in Constantia, the wine country outside the city. There are many other wine areas, but Constantia is the closest to the city and the oldest in South Africa, plus we had a bus pass for the wine tour which dropped us off and picked us up at three different vineyards.
Let’s first talk about how South Africans have perfected the art of wine tasting. To be fair, my American wine tasting experiences have been limited to Vineyards in NC and Va mostly. So, it is possible that things are done differently in other wine regions like Napa Valley, perhaps. I don’t know because I haven’t been there (. . .side eye. . .)
But, the general concept is go to the vineyard, walk up the counter, select the allotted number of wines to taste or follow the set tasting list, the server will pour a few sips of wine in your glass from behind the counter and tell you a little about the wine, then you either leave or you pick your favorite and order a glass or a bottle to enjoy on the grounds.
We’re doing it all wrong.
Here, all the vineyards we went to (except one due to space) seated us at a table like at a restaurant. From there, a server brought us one wine at a time to the table and the tasting pours were VERY generous. Five tastings probably equalled two full glasses of wine.
Because the tastings were so large, it took significant time in between wines to finish, so you sat at your table and talked with people. We chatted up some women from Finland who had found the same mistake airfare tickets through Qatar Airways that we had found and flew to Johannesburg by way of Doha, as well. It would be impossible to finish a tasting in less an hour and we spent 1.5 to 2 in most places. Once we finished all our tastings there was no way we could have or would have wanted to order a glass to have there, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to walk into the next vineyard.
Wine and hot sun are not the best mixture and we both had headaches this morning. At some point after the first tasting we stopped asking how much the tastings cost. We were very pleased to check our account this morning and find that we tasted 17 wines at three different estates and it totaled $29.93. That made this hangover not feel so bad!
Our favorite wine was at a vineyard called Eagles Next, which had a beautiful “backyard garden” atmosphere with families filling picnic tables and the dog-in-residence, Teddy, roaming around freely. Our server was so laid back he didn’t even have shoes on and the wines were spectacular. The best one by far was their flagship wine (every vineyard had a flagship wine that was their best rated). Here, it was the Shriaz, which had won too many award to name but is currently ranked the best Shiraz in South Africa.
We’ve also been drinking a lot of a uniquely South African wine called Pinotage. Every glass we’ve had has been fantastic. Its a smooth red wine that tastes delicious and goes down way too easily. Interestingly enough, its not a blended wine. It is actually made from a human-made crossbreeding between pinot noir grapes and cineast grapes, which was first done by a professor at Stellenbosch University in the 1920s.
The soil for growing these engineered vines is only found in South Africa and part of France – however the French refuse to make this type of genetically modified wine as they view it as a viticultural sin, akin to human cloning.
By the time we got back to our hotel everything was closed (despite it being only 6 p.m. on a Sunday). There were no restaurants open nearby not even the KFC or the Wimpys (an African burger chain like McDonalds). We ended up having to order in Dominos Pizza delivery – we’re not proud, but we were hungry.
Wine tasting was fun and easy but some of the other things we’ve planned to do in Cape Town, are proving more difficult. We’ve tried to visit table mountain twice but both times the wind has been too strong for the cableway to run to the mountain top.
The ferries to Robben Island were unexpectedly closed down yesterday and we heard from our Finnish friends that the tours are now completely booked through next Thursday, after we’re already gone. One of the women said this was her second time in Cape Town and she still hadn’t been able to do the cableway to Table Mt. or the tour of Robben Island.
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