South African Wine Adventure

Trip of a Lifetime

By Dianne Boate and Robert Meyer

Leaving from San Francisco on a winery January day, we stepped out of the plane in Capetown, 35 hours later, into brilliant South African summer sunshine. This trip was not just a holiday. We were there to explore as much of the wine country as could be managed in three weeks. Our main center of activity was Franschhoek, a very beautiful valley dotted with wine farms in Cape Dutch-style architecture. Franschhoek means “French Corner.” Many families here are eighth and ninth generation descendants of French Huguenots who arrived in the late 1600s, running from religious persecution. In the Huguenot Museum is a small traveling trunk with blue patterned dinner plates buried upright in sand to keep from breaking. There is a quiet peace in this valley, less than an hour’s drive from Capetown. It reminds one of Provence, France, where your soul can settle in to savor an unmistakable sense of well being. It is the magic of the air, the smell of sun releasing the special fragrances of earth, grass, leaves, flowers, and trees. It is a glass of sparkling wine in your hand and the smell of outdoor cooking called braai (pronounced BRY) that we know as barbecue.

Just Like Home
As guests in a beautiful home, and later in a guest house, we could observe first hand the efforts to create beauty in the home environment and live graciously while working very hard at wine farming and raising horses. The people here reminded us of the spirit of the people of Australia , the Do It Now Attitude that is on the ready for anything. It is a gusto for living that is most admirable. The guest house had a real kitchen, which led to our first adventure grocery shopping in the local market and at roadside stands. Baby cabbage, Gem squash, corn, potatoes, mangoes, local cheese, hearty breads, and Coleman’s mustard powder with green peppercorns. For about $6.00 US, we could purchase quality wine, which tasted so good as we sat in the twilight on our patio overlooking an orchard and a vineyard. This, after an exhausting day driving to visit wine farms to the east and north.

Local News
Here is a story we heard: Two brothers dumped their unsalable wine into a river stream. A dairy farm downstream wound up with drunken cows and milk that tasted like wine. Yes, they were caught.

A Sorry Sight
At the edge of town, there was a disturbing contrast. It’s the squatters’ quarters made of found rubble. Corrugated iron is used for roofing material; odd pieces of wood form the rest of the small shacks that are chockablock next to each other. Some of the iron is stolen from bus stop shelters. Locally it is called “redistribution of wealth” and “affirmative shopping.” There is no running water and no electricity here. It was hateful taking a picture.
In order to get around for work and shopping, the folks take taxis called “Flying Coffins.” The vehicles are vans stuffed sometimes twice over with people that are frequently killed when the driver passes on the wrong side and veers out of control. Driving the roads one sees a never ending procession of people walking because most do not have cars. The color combinations of headgear, blouses, skirts, shirts, trousers, and shoes were fascinating.

Valuable Wine Region
It’s easy to immediately appreciate the value of South Africa as a wine region when its relationship to other major wine growing areas is revealed. We saw it on a map: Going north and south equidistantly from the equator are two curved bands that look like a smile in the northern hemisphere and a pout in the southern hemisphere. Within the bands lie the lands that produce the world’s great grapes. In the North, the band sweeps from the North American west coast to southern Europe and beyond the Black Sea; in the South, it sweeps from Chile and Argentina to S. Africa to southern parts of Australia and a bit of New Zealand. This explains why the Piedmont area of Italy, the Napa Valley of California, and the Rancagua region of Chile in South America resemble each other.
Our goal was to visit as many wineries as possible in eleven regions, sampling wine for import. We were very fortunate to secure the guidance of Mr. Jurgen Wessels, a marketing expert, who drove over a large mountain everyday to lead us in the day’s adventure. Our arrival coincided with a heat wave which sent the farmers scurrying to gather up the fast-ripening fruit. Everywhere on the roads were gondolas filled with grapes being rushed to the crushing equipment. Many of these grapes, however, are used for the fruit juice industry, a very large enterprise here. You can buy delicious red or white grape juice in bottles.

Now Dianne must confess: “After the first week, every morning I thought I would stay ‘home’ in the guest house, relax, and take it easy. But I somehow managed to put myself together, have breakfast, and get in the car for another long ride. I was rewarded by some unusual sights: two hundred pairs of eyes watching me very carefully over a fence, ostrich; a field of haystacks put together like a geometric work of art; two baboons high atop telephone poles along the roadway; a sweeping vista that took eight photos to capture in a panorama of where the wheat grows, and a dozen large white cattle egrets perched in a vineyard.”

Emerging Wine Industry
The S. African wine industry is just emerging from the effects of the former apartheid system, the subsequent sanctions, and the rigorous control of the former monopoly. How long would you be in business if you were told exactly what to plant, how much of it, and what the selling price would be, competing in a world market that was determined not to buy from you? The restaurants were also restricted in their choice of wine varietals and selling price. The monopoly system was there to ensure survival of the industry but high costs swallowed profits and created years of hardship. As Jurgen Wessels told us, “In 1994, during first democratic elections, which went peacefully, wine farmers realized it was time for a free and independent future from the monopolies. An (almost) free economy now exists where they can choose their own partners in trade, locally as well as overseas.”
We want you to have an idea of why this aspect of the country is so fascinating: Very substantial financial investments have been made in recent years. We saw new buildings, new equipment, new jacketed tanks, French Oak barrels, and great expanses of new vineyards. Some of the new owners are German, Swiss, Italian, and Russian. Winemakers come from France, America, and Canada, and call South Africa home now.

Here is another story we heard at a winery called Haute Provence. A building there is named “Angel’s Tears.” Lore has it that one year the grapes were poor. The winemaker used all his imagination to create something from limited quality. He was in despair and left it in the wine cellar. The angels came, tasted the wine, and cried tears of joy, which the winemaker found.

Our last week in South Africa was very diverse. Three days on the elegant Rovos Rail train, a visit to Kimberly Diamond Mines, a private tour of Soweto that will be a separate story, surviving going down a gold mine shaft, and spending the night in a tent in a wild animal park. How would you sleep if the vehicle you were in nearly ran over an Egyption Cobra, and your companion remarks, “Into your tent I’ll creep”?