Wine Wednesdays

Wine Wednesdays

It’s no lie that South Africa is home to some of the best wines in the world. So in planning our trip we set aside a whole day for a tour of wine country. We had heard from many a PCV that the Wine Tour is a must and who could say no to all day wine and lunch? Not this girl and her Tates!

We were picked up in the morning and driven about an hour or so to the first vineyard. I don’t think I had been drinking that early since college. Our tour guide Grandwell, was wonderful, a lot of fun, and extremely knowledgeable of all things wine and South Africa related. He explained to us all about how wine was made, the different processes for different things. I tried really hard to pay attention but it was either the excitement of being on a wine tour, the amount of wine I drank that day or just being on holiday, but my brain was turned off.

Each vineyard had something different to offer. The first one called Villiera we were taught how to properly taste wine (maybe not properly because I think our guide was trying to have fun with us…) and a few of the wines were paired with traditional South African biltong or droerwors. Jerky. The second place, Fairview, was my favorite because they paired cheese with their wines and while the wine was not unlimited, the cheese was. Shannon and the other 7 PCVs who also live villages were very happy and satisfied. The third location, I don’t remember the name of but we ate a wonderful lunch and were able to taste wine right from the barrel, as many times as we wanted. It is also where Derek and I took our engagement picture.

The fourth vineyard, Lovane, was a smaller scaled winery also a bed and breakfast, had a beautiful view of the winelands, and paired their wines with chocolate. Holla cheese and chocolate with wine. Could this day get any better? Why Shannon, it can.

Classy cheese and wine pairings

Our fifth and final stop was Annandale. Another small winery with history to boast. The wine tasting room had dust, cobwebs, and artifacts to tell centuries of stories. Their claim to fame is making the wedding wine for Prince Albert of Monaco titled Chalbert Merlot. Very classy and while it was not available for tasting, plenty of other bottles were, including their brandy. Our tasting expert felt we weren’t having enough fun by the fifth winery so he made sure we left with plenty in our systems. Once again I’ll spare the gory details on a public forum but I’ll just say that we had the guide drop us off at the bars at the end of the day, we bee-lined for the Mexican restaurant, I ordered some delicious Mexican dinner and a drink with vodka and jalapenos (which was surprisingly delicious cause I also had it another night), and we ended the night at a drag show featuring Tina Turner.

Thursday was our chill day for obvious reasons. Lawrence and I laid in bed as Derek made us bagel (yes our first bagels in two years!) breakfast sandwiches with avocado. I’ll be honest, Derek is such an early bird that this happened pretty much every morning and while it was delicious, I still needed that extra boost to get back on the horse for the day.  Enter McDonalds.

I feel no shame in admitting that McDonalds was one of the more anticipated adventures of going to South Africa. Nothing says “America’s global dominance” r home quite like a McDonalds in multiple locations in one city on the opposite side of the world. And nothing says “that mythical place called America that you once knew still does exist in the world” quite like walking into a McDonalds and seeing something you recognize on the menu. It tasted the same, from the fountain pop to the ketchup. A double cheeseburger, fries and a diet coke still does the trick.

We enjoyed the rest of our day walking along the Cape Town waterfront. It was gorgeous, the waterfront condos and apartments and sailboats and yachts made us just stare in wonder and we found some really cool artisan/local shops and eateries. Cape Town really is just an amazingly wonderful city. I didn’t believe it when one of my best friends said she almost didn’t come back to MSU after a summer internship there. She spent 3 months and I pretty much fell in love in 5 days.