Scenes of Stellenbosch Wine Vineyards

Wow! It's been a pretty long, terrible week filled with stresses and homework. I haven't been able to blog about something great that I did last week, so I wanted to talk about it and show pictures before I get behind.

Last week Friday, I took part in a tour of a few wine farms here in the Western Cape. South Africa is famous for its different wines, and you can't really stay here without checking out one of the major wine areas. We went to Stellenbosch. It is a nearby city, but also an area that consists of 136 completely separate wine estates. So, yes, there were lots of options.

We got picked up on Friday by a freelance tour guide that Brittany had been working with. We ended up visiting five different estates: Hoopenburg, Kanonkop, Tokara, Thelema, and Bilton. Each had very different feels to them, different sizes, etc. I should say that I've never been a fan of wine. I went more for the experience and the sights than anything else. Beyond this, though, I reinforced the fact that I prefer white wine to red, and I'll get Malaria before I drink a Shiraz again (which may actually be likely). In fact, I think my favorite part of Friday was eating wine grapes, which are so delicious.

After tasting over 15 different wines at 4 farms on Friday, and not really being wild about any of them (but enjoying a few), I was pretty much done with it. I also found that I much preferred the smaller farms, like the first one, Hoopenburg. It had one young winemaker, and we got a tour from the marketing director. They had a fairly small operation, but it was intimate, unique, and the focus was actually on being excited about wine instead of being pompous or rich, and talking about how 'this wine is named after our colonial great-grandfather'. But ya, Hoopenburg was great.

That was in contrast to Kanonkop, a much older estate, where I wanted to hit the woman upside the head with her own Cabernet Sauvignon. As she spoke condescendingly toward me, I imagined her hair flying to the side as she shouted "Ohhh no! I've been smashed in my rich, arrogant head with my own wine bottle! Whatever will I do?" I would smile and walk out, leaving her to pick up the pieces of her sick pepper cheese and rude tone. Despite her, the other two were quite nice and fun to see. At a few places we were able to enter the cellars and see all the barrels. Dope.

On Friday night we went back to Stellenbosch, the actual city at the center of all this. It struck me as very much like Door County in Wisconsin. Very chill, quiet, and had lots of tourist shops. It is comprised, it seemed, of mostly white Afrikaans speaking peeps, because the people walking around were a bit homogeneous and many of the municipal signs and business markers were first in Afrikaans, then in English occasionally. We stayed at a backpacker's hostel, which wasn't the best, but it was nice. We had our own room, and it was not very far from everything. You also can't beat $9 per person for a night.

In the morning, we had breakfast and headed to one last wine estate, Bilton. We did a wine and chocolate tasting at this point, and I actually really enjoyed it. I was wowed by their Sauvignon Blanc, so I bought two bottles (only like $4-5 per bottle when direct from the farm). I carried on drinking other people's wine at the table, and was having a great time until the owner or some old man landed two helicopters on the front lawn. It was blowing all types of stuff into the restaurant, and I began feeling irritated and disconnected from the real Cape Town. It must be nice to own a wine estate.

Anyway, here are the rest of the photos from the day. Only about 20 of my favorites, nothing too extensive. You'll even come across a photo of the helicopter man. And if you're in the mood to really get a sense of some of the views, the farms, and even a fancy schmancy lobby, see below for some panoramas.



Panoramas:

Hoopenburg Lobby (loved this place)

A view of the Kanonkop Grape Vineyards

Lots of wine barrels! These things are expensive, and usually imported.

Tokara Vineyards. The most beautiful place, olive trees on top.

Tomorrow I will be doing my first actual SCUBA dive in the ocean, and I'm stoked. Perhaps more exciting, even, is that I begin volunteering in Khayelitsha township this week. I will be blogging about it when I can. It's been great getting messages from you all!