Howzit howzit! Hope you had a lekker weekend! Yesterday, I went to a supper where my friends had some wine and bubbly but I didn't because I am detoxing at the moment.
One of the top five things about South Africa, and especially in Cape Town, is the world-famous vineyards and wine tasting.
The climate in Western Cape is very similar to the Mediterranean climate. The summers are hot and dry; the winters are humid, mild and rainy (just like we were taught in elementary school). This is supposed to be the optimum condition for winemaking.
The Dutch East India Company, which started large-scale colonization in South Africa, also played a significant part in initiating wine production. Jan van Riebeeck, The founder of Dutch East India, started small-scale winemaking. He was followed by Simon van der Stel who bought 750 hectares of land in what is now called Constantia. This was the first milestone for mass wine production. Today’s Constantia is located between the Southern Suburbs and the Cape Peninsula.
I went there for the first time during a day trip around Cape Peninsula, but the wine farms were already closed late in the afternoon. A few weeks later, two friends of mine (Dee and Builla) told me that they were planning to go to Constantia for wine tasting on that Sunday. Their actual plan was to get together with some people they had been chatting via the app Meet-Up.
We hit the road on Sunday at around noon. The place we planned to visit was Constantia Glen, one of the nine vineyards in Constantia. It was built on the outskirts of Table Mountain, so literally 90% of the things I could see besides the sky were green.
They took us to the garden where the meet-up folks were awaiting. According to Dee, the group's name was "The Awesome 20's", but the average age was definitely at least 40. At a quick glance, I saw bunch of people whose spirit animals would definitely be peacocks. In my whole life, I have never seen so many bracelets, fancy jewelry, layers of makeup and swaggering in one place. Not my vibe. Anyway, moving on...
According to the menu, there were several options in terms of variety and price. If you want to taste 4-5 kinds of wine, the prices are generally around 40-50 R in total. For the packages with 10-12 glasses of wine, the prices can go up to 90 Rand.
To be honest, I should have tried the 10 glasses of wine-option to endure the boring conversations, but I took the option with four different wines to not toss money around. One red, one rose, one white, one MCC wine.
They brought the wines one after the other and filled the glasses up to a little less than half. Each time the guide poured a wine, she would mention the brief history of its production and its ingredients.
According to the guide, not all the wines belonged to Constantia Glen. Some were imported from other places, especially from Franschhoek. There were 4 kinds of special wines produced only in Constantia Glen: Constantia Glen Two, Constantia Glen Three, Constantia Glen Five and a special kind of Sauvignon Blanc. To find out more, click here.
The spotlight of the menu was one special MCC (Methode Cap Classique). It's actually almost identical to Champagne in terms of the taste and the sparkle, except Champagne is actually the name of a town in France. Therefore, for a wine to be classified as a Champagne, it must be produced from the grapes grown in Champagne. Other types of sparkling wines have different names. The name of the version produced in South Africa is MCC. The MCC wine I tasted had a distinct light brown color. The color came from the owner's beloved dog, whose fur had a – guess what – light brown color. She wanted the wine to be in the same color, so she gave the instructions accordingly during the production.
Other than wine, there are other beverages and food options on the menu including non-alcoholic drinks even, although most of them were unnecessarily expensive. For example, a simple onion soup or toast can be 90 Rand. The only thing that had a reasonable price was cheese. Builla ordered cheese for 50 Rand and they really brought a huge block of cheese that was incredibly tasty.
So, that's how I concluded my first wine tasting experience in South Africa among many other tastings throughout the months that followed. I can’t wait to share about the wine tasting experiences I had in many places in Western Cape Province.
Do you like wine? Are you curious about South African wine, or have you ever tried it? Drop me a comment below.
This article was paraphrased by me; the original article is on my personal blog. Link
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Haritakurdu