After some ‘serious’ map navigation by way of mostly guesswork, we decided on four wine wards we liked the look of out of the hundreds you can visit in the winelands of South Africa.
The first stop was Camberley (whose name I liked because it reminded me of home) and as we pulled up in the cute, flora-filled driveway – less imposing but more homely, more inviting than the spectacularly grand estate we’d visited the day before – I got a small pang for the comfort and the familiarity of home, after six weeks of not really missing much at all.
It was early; we were only going to have a small sample to start with. Then we met Giscard, who showed us the cellar and let us churn the grapes. Who told us about his life in the Congo and how small the vineyard is compared to most, and how the yeast ferments the sugar and turns it to alcohol, which incidentally means there’s actually no sugar left in the wine (by law in South Africa at least) which is why it does nothing at all to your blood sugars, diabetes friends. We heard how he meticulously weaves from refining the blends to sticking every label on every bottle of wine that gets sold. Then, inevitably, we slowly and generously sampled every single wine they produce, including their sparkling red, and their wine named after Harry Potter because of its curious alchemy, and their wine named after a cheating man’s wife by way of apology. We ate the cheeseboard with pesto made from herbs and garlic grown in the garden and laughed at how we had only made it to the one estate, but were sure that if we’d visited 20 we wouldn’t have learnt nearly as much, nor had as much fun, and isn’t that the beauty of the unknown and the unexpected and of meeting friendly, passionate people.
Then I turned back for no reason at all and noticed how the sun had set the valley alight but the mountain remained, imposing and moody, cloaked in the clouds, and I thought I might cry at the romance of it all. But by ‘romance’ I think actually I just mean drinking nine different wines before 2pm and that really, on a languishing and delicious Wednesday when everything you usually worry about is so very far away, they’re pretty much the same thing.
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