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October really is wine month in the
Cape...
Even though we're still a few months
from harvesting season, plenty of wine farms celebrate their 2012
releases this time of year and, with the summer sun playing along,
there's more than enough reason to head outdoors this weekend.
Last weekend I went to Season of
Sauvignon, which takes place in the Durbanville wine valley region. I
was so sad to see that one of my favourite boutique wineries had
closed: de Vallei. It's a sign of the times. But determined to
support these wine farmers more than ever by consuming copious
amounts of alcohol, we rallied some friend together for some serious
wine tasting.
We started at Hillcrest wine estate
(http://www.hillcrestfarm.co.za), where we did a
vertical tasting of their sauvignon blancs. We also thoroughly
enjoyed the reds (particularly the cab sauv merlot) and the rose.
After lining our stomachs with some brownies and buying some olive
oil, we headed off to the next wine farm, Nitida
(http://nitida.co.za).
We shared a bottle of the Nitida
Sauvignon Blanc, which was easy drinking without too much acidity,
followed by a lunch at their Tables Restaurant. The menu offers
casual cafe-style meals such as burgers, steak rolls, paninis and
muscles, fairly reasonably priced.
It was a busy day and there was a
slight mix-up with out order, which we didn't mind, but a woman (who
we presume was the manager) came out apologized, and then said that
our waiter would pay for his mistake as he should know better. We
were all a bit put off by her attitude and headed off soon after to
the main tasting room to try some of the other wines.
The tasting was basically finished (it
was only about 1:45pm), so we only managed to try a couple things
from the last remaining bottles before we headed off to our next
stop.
We arrived at D'aria
(http://www.dariawinery.co.za/)
in time for some live music, plenty of wine tasting and festivities.
We were loving the sauvignon slush puppies and sauvignon tequila
shots, which only added more to our festive mood. I went on to the
reds pretty quickly, as D'aria makes an amazing shiraz, called
Soprano... many mores bottles ensued...
Our friends headed back to Cape Town,
while my husband and I continued on through the rugby and well into
the evening – dancing to an awesome 80s cover band – before
deciding that we'd had far too much fun to possibly drive home, and
ended up staying at a hotel down the road...
But that's not the end of our
wine-tasting activities this month...
Tomorrow is the annual Pinotage on Tap
festival at Diemersfontein (http://www.diemersfontein.co.za/).
Tickets are R320, but they include lunch, a separate goodie bag with
water and sandwiches, a chocolate fountain (very popular) activities,
games, live music (including Albert Frost, Gerald Clark and Goodluck)
and most importantly, as much wine as you can drink – straight out
of the barrel.... This year I see they are offering camping
facilities for those who don't have designated drivers. There is also
a return bus from Cape Town. Check the website for details.
021 864 5050
More contact details:
Hillcrest:
021 976 1110
Nitida:
021 976 1467
D'aria:
021 801 6772
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