Only one of us has been wine tasting in South Africa and Steve was only there briefly, so we can’t offer much in the way of recommendations or meaningful reviews. So this will be about the experience, rather than the wines, which is what Power Tasting is all about.
Steve was in Cape Town on business and gave himself the weekend to overcome the jet lag. He found himself alone, 8,000 miles from home and that Sunday was his birthday. So to shake the blues he went wine tasting.
Fortunately, the best known winemaking areas in South Africa are quite near to Cape Town. Stellenbosch, Paarl and Franschhoek are less than an hour’s drive from downtown. Unfortunately, Steve had no car, no idea of where to go and besides they drive on the wrong side of the road there. Then and now, the American dollar goes pretty far in South Africa, so Steve found a taxi and hired it for the day.
Nederburg Winery, with dining tables outside. Photo courtesy of Spice4Life.
The taxi driver was no wine enthusiast and had no particular idea where he was going, either. Steve had read up on South African wines and had a few wineries in mind for a visit. He was lucky that they were fairly close to one another: Meerlust, Nederburg and Spier were on his list. Amazingly quickly, Steve was seeing grape vines out the taxi window and in a half an hour he had arrived at Spier.
One thing he quickly learned was that they don’t call them vineyards but rather “wine farms” which, when you think about it, makes a lot of sense. The second thing he learned is that South Africa has a significant wine history. In the 19th century, it was a world-class producer; the Constantia wine estate grew one of the world’s most coveted dessert wines. (You can still get a sense of it with Klein Constantia Vin de Constance, but according to the historians it’s not the same thing.) Next, Steve learned that many of the better wine farms have top-notch restaurants. Steve’s lunch was local lamb chops and a bottle Nederburg’s best Cabernet Sauvignon.
The Drakenstein Mountains. Photo courtesy of SA-Venues.com.
One of Steve’s best memories of his visit was the beauty of the vineyards at the foot of the Drakenstein (“Dragon’s Stone”) Mountains. Of course there are many vineyard areas in Wine Country with vines and mountains, Napa Valley not the least. But the views in Paarl and Franschhoek are particularly striking.
Most of the wines in South Africa are from familiar grapes but there is a sort of wine that is unique. Called Pinotage, it is from grapes cross-bred between Pinot Noir and Cinsault, beginning in the 1920’s. It doesn’t taste quite like anything else and frankly, we’re not big fans of Pinotage. But it does add a certain local flavor to a visit to South Africa, where there are a few rather excellent wines, from better known grapes, to taste.