Another day of drinking :)

Thursday morning when Kevin picked us up we learned that less than an hour after crossing the river at Montague, they closed the bridge due to flooding. Several days later, after two more days of rain in the area, we would see photos in the newspaper of our tea spot in Montague, all but washed away! Its horrifying to think that such a lovely spot is gone, but I am sure they will rebuild. I certainly hope so.

And that semi blocking the road as we were heading for Stellenbosch also resulted in a closed road for more than 7 hours! We were so lucky we had been able to get through to get to these tastings. We appreciated our luck enough to raise a toast to it! So tasting we continued.

First stop Thelema, WOW! A modern building with great wines. I added to my collection quickly and we moved next store to Tokara, with its wonderful views of the mountains (well, what you could see behind dense cloud cover) and both Scott and I added bottles to our collections. We had already visited two wineries, bought three bottles and tasted a dozen wines! I should mention, that it was not quite 10 am.

Next we went to Rustenberg, a gorgeous traditional Cape Dutch architecture spot that had clearly once been and still was a dairy farm. We were the first in the world to taste their newest wine, but we all agreed it was still too young to be properly appreciated. They had a magnificent garden (think Duke Gardens or Filoli at a single home). I learned about and walked the labyrinth in that garden, after which I was exhausted. I was now drunk AND exhausted. It was all of 11 am. OUCH! How will I ever keep up at this pace?

Fortunately, we got a small respite as Kevin drove us through the town of Stellenbosch past the University and lovely old buildings on Dorp Street on our way to Meerlust Wineries for our next tasting. Dorp Street has a long row of historical buildings that were so fascinating to see.

Amazingly, we past a field beside the road with Zebras, Wildebeest, Springbok, and more. I suddenly wondered why we had tried so hard to do a safari when all these animals were in a single cow pasture. Meerlust was beautiful, with a drive lined with palms, and a wonderful young man providing our tasting. He was charming and brought out a 1998 Merlot, and again Scott was buying. These wines are so hard to resist, they are delicious. Who needs Sonoma, when you can have Stellenbosch wines for half the price?? Oh yeah, there is that long flight first though and with airport security today they are also a bear to get home. I guess I will just have to drink lots of them while I am here.

From Meerlust we headed to Spier, another winery for a traditional African buffet lunch. I targeted the Poetjies (pronounced Poy-kies) the traditional slow cooked stews, and the desserts (no surprise there) and we ate until we could eat not stuff in one bite more. Then we wandered across the parking lot to see the Cheetah recovery center and the gorgeous, gorgeous Cheetahs. Good thing they do not let you take one home. The babies were adorable. Just cute little kitties, right? How much damage could they really do? I think Emmy would get along with a kitten just fine.

We have been seeing better weather as the day progresses, but continue our afternoon under a significant black cloud. We are all overfed and a little tipsy after trying Spier wines with lunch, but we manage to slip in one last winery for the day, a fairly new one called Waterford. The environment is stunning, a gorgeous new and impressive building build around a courtyard and a tasting room that looks more like a French bistro, with cute round tables scattered about the room. Here we are doing a tasting paired with chocolates. First we try the non-paired wines, then three paired with chocolate, first a white with a rather uninteresting milk chocolate (both the wine and the chocolate left no impression on me), then a red with rock salt dark chocolate (an outstanding combination), and last a sweet wine with the strangest chocolate I have ever have. Actually, perhaps for the first and only time in my life, a chocolate I did not like! It was a milk chocolate infused with roses and geraniums. Yikes. Why ruin a perfectly good mike chocoloate?
BTW, the wine was pretty awful too.

Back to Francschoek at last, tipsy but content. The rain has abated so Mike and I do a quick wander about the small village for a photo or two. Its lovely. The off to dinner at ICI, the bistro attached to La Quartier Francaise, one of SAs premiere restaurants. We had an outstanding dinner, with interesting combinations like Corn and Lime Soup or Asparagus and Strawberry salad. Oh yes, they do a marvelous banana split. Then back to the Rusthof where I tried to update my blog (connection way too slow) and instead had a lovely and lively conversation with a man from Sweden who knew more about every topic we chose than I did, be it US politics or our health care system, or the state of our economy, or theirs and of course, any thing Africa. I learned a great deal in a short time, and enjoyed the process. Time to call it a night after a very very full day.