Wine, wine everywhere – and lots of drops to drink!

View towards Franzchhoek, over the wine

We’ve received several rather critical (in a nice way) comments that some (ok, much) of our blog overloads on descriptions of great wine and meals – in fact, daughter Wendy has tried to prohibit any more such talk. If those things are part of this exciting adventure, how can we possibly not give you the details of all – like the leather in the wine for the dinner of road kill? In any case, our next stop after Capetown was Franschhoek, the justly named wine and gourmet dining capital of South Africa, where we spent our anniversary. So you know now what’s coming up. Tough it out, Wink!

We stayed at a beautiful boutique hotel called Le Quartier Français. A note about the French influence here – a group of Huguenots fled here from France and brought with them their wine making skills. Thus this whole area has a heavy French accent, although the language spoken is predominately the S. African version of Dutch as in the rest of the country. English is also spoken by everyone we met, except for a few workers in a vineyard whom we asked to take our picture. But we digress from ………………. wine, food and accommodations!

Our room was beautiful, spacious and with a fireplace that warmed both body and soul. The hotel also has a restaurant with a tasting menu that we tried on our second night there – our anniversary. They had been tipped to that happy event by our tour agent so they started us out with a coupe of champagne. The tasting menu allowed us to choose 4 courses (we could have opted for the 8 course version) and each was magnificent. One of the best meals of our lives, although we hadn’t heard of some of the unique ingredients and we still managed to be hungry again the next morning.

Beauty everywhere!

When we came back from dinner the fire had been lit for us and the room just looked so warm with fire and a big bouquet of beautiful flowers (if the giver is allowed to say so) for my even more beautiful wife. My missing bag had also been delivered earlier in the day so I could get out of three day old clothes for our special evening.

I’ll pass gently over the other meals we had while there by simply mentioning they were all great, even the charcuterie and cheese plate we had while sampling wines at a wine tasting.

By this time I had gotten heavily into the red wines, since we toured several vineyards and had many happy discoveries along the way. The do some great shiraz, cabs and pinotages, but what really appealed to me was their Bordeaux-style blends. Huge bouquet and flavors, which as much as I appreciated, am unable to describe.

At Moreson trying their Bordeau blend

Maybe the best of these is the one I choose our anniversary night, produced by Rupert and Rothschild, another example of Rothschild working with local vintners to produce outstanding blends (Opus One is the US version). Just outstanding! There was also a wine competition the weekend we were there, and a Shiraz named Stork won best wine over all – I was able to convince Susan that we still had room in our luggage for a bottle. By the way, this “best bottle available” was still under $50 – try to do that in Napa Valley! My (guess who’s adding a note here!) white wines – pretty uncomplicated, but crisp and smooth - only ran about $9.00. Rance tried to convince me that his was five times better, but I’m not buying that.

The terrain was very hilly – almost mountainous, and uniformly lovely. It was also quite a bit greener than the rest of the country we saw – made for great crops and particularly the aforementioned wine. It also made for great hiking, although for some reason you have to pay a hiking fee (nominal, but nonetheless…).

Chardonney - what else?

Our favorite hike took us through a vineyard, with vines just beginning to get buds since it’s just now Spring here, and lots of wildlife. One of the birds touted in the write-up was a raptor, and it took all my powers of persuasion to convince Susan that it was probably not the duck we saw along the way. Another entry for her “Baby Book”! (She won't let me post that pic!)

South Africa is such a diverse country. The countryside was so different from Cape Town – Franschhoek being in a valley - and the people, still friendly and kind, were now speaking either French or a French Africans. All in all, a great experience, and a great way to celebrate our 28 wonderful years together.