WINE TASTING!

Wednesday 10th November
  This was the biggest touring party I had been on.  There were 8 of us.  Two guys from Zurich, Switzerland, a Brazilian couple who were taking a break from working in Rawanda, Angola (she had an Italian mother and had been to university in Paris), an English couple from near Heathrow (he worked for Virgin Atlantic) and a chap who declared himself to be from Philadelphia, but when I got talking to him it turned out he was originally from St Petersburg ("or you may know it better as Lenningrad", he said).  I assured him that St Petersburg was fine by me.  He told me the date he left was engraven in his memory - 3rd November 1981.  On further conversation it turned out that his wife came from the environs of Lwow!  We discussed Wodka Wyborowa and strolled around Stellenbosch together (see last photo). 

  We started out at the Zevenwacht family vineyards where their store of barrels of wine would certainly see me through to the end of my days.  The oak for the barrels is imported and each barrel can only be used four times.  Johan gave us an interesting tour round the factory and then gave us passionate descriptions of the wines he had us taste, along with home made cheeses.

  Basil, our Cape coloured driver, gave us a running commentary as we drove around the spectacular scenery as well as giving us an optimistic outlook for the future of South Africa and giving us a good insight into the problems facing them and what is being done to solve them.  Our next stop was Tokara where we sampled six more wines before moving on to Rickety Bridge where the sampling was accompanied by lunch.
Finally we drove to the Paarl Mountains where we had further samplings at the Seidelberg Estate, a very picturesque locations with the mountains in the background.

  All in all we saw some fabulous scenery, the weather was perfect, and the wine was delicious.  The Pinotage and Syrah were especially memorable.  Problems with the wi-fi at the hotel have resulted in a bit of delay in posting the last two days, it now being late Thursday morning, but onwards and upwards.