I am no expert discerning wine connoisseur, I have been known to drop an ice cube into red wine and to near freeze my glass of white wine with half an iceberg of ice. I'm not too fussy but I know what I like and what I don't. No warm cat pee trying to pass itself off as a white wine, thanks.
We have a friend who is launching his own Cape wine lands tour package and wanted to use us as guinea pigs. Who am I to refuse?
So we pack ourselves into his newly branded minivan, including Luke's carseat, Poppie's pram and all our various cooler bags, baby bags and carry bags.
The weather is cool but nice to travel in. The van has aircon anyway and we look forward to a day travelling in style and comfort.
So we tasted the wine in shifts. If you have young children you will be familiar with this method of co-operation between partners. (Somehow I always seem to end up gobbling down my less than luke-warm meal after The Darling Husband has enjoyed his juicy sizzling steak while suggesting I take the first shift of child supervision. "Ok, dear, you watch him and then you can sit down and relax and enjoy your meal and I'll take over." Hmmf. By the time I can sit down we are just about ready to get out of the restaurant as quickly as possible as said toddler is at dangerous meltdown levels and in need of some time out, despite jumping on smelly jumping castles for ages. So I wolf down the cold congealing food and vow never to eat out again.)
Anyway. Our intrepid tour guide took us to some gorgeous estates, some commercial and some quite off the beaten track. I refer to Uva Mira, a vineyard high up on the Stellenbosch mountains with an awesome view. I'm assuming its awesome as we didn't quite get to see it as everything was shrouded and dripping with mist and fine rain. Higher up, the cloud swirled around a stunning majestic Tuscan villa which must have quite envious views. The wines were outstanding and were added to our wine collection. The young Afrikaans lady that was serving us and giving us the wine tasting was quite charming, even snapping photos of our group and declaring the pictures and our rampant offspring were "te cute en oulik, man".
We also discovered we'd left the pram at the previous farm and had to backtrack to collect it. The customers were in gales of laughter after Jacques staged a panic, ran into the tasting room, found the pram and asked "Where's the baby??". He is an entertainer.
We went to Delheim to taste their wonderful sweet wines and added their Spatzendreck to our growing collection. Its label won an award for worst label as it features a cheesy little bird crapping over a wine barrel. They have, however, kept the label for fun.
Next we wanted to visit Fairview, what better combination than good cheeses and wines? Boy, was that place packed! Too crowded and too busy. A 15 table waiting list was just too long to wait for an over-priced meal. So we decided to head into Paarl for some quick take-aways. Children, mostly mine, were starting to get tired and irritable and testing my patience by moaning all the way into Paarl and wearing off my wine buzz. Looking for a KFC proved to be disappointing as it was closed!!! After passing all the other junk food eateries we had to turn around and settle for MacDonalds.
I have never had such a good meal in a long time.
The group's mood just lifted after stuffing french fries into our mouths and filling our grumbling tummies. Amazing.
After briefly stopping off at our friends' own farm, The Darling Husband bought us all ice creams and we headed home, wine bottles merrily clinking in the boot.
A lovely outing, another notch on our parenting experience belts and more happy moments to remember.
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