Wine Country, lucky me

Cape Town 3:45pm - I am currently unsupervised, so you will get a true account of our day in "Whine" Country yesterday.

As most of you know, Kim is a big time wine lover - me - can take it or leave it. So my job is to drive Kim around to all the wineries of her choice. Kim is also a poor map reader, so I have to drive and find the winery...and Kim just keeps drinking...

We get going fairly early and arrive at our first winery by around 10am...Warwick Estate. Since it is winter down here, we expect it to be very quiet at most of the spots we will go to...we are also on a quest to find wine that we can't find back home. As Kim is getting ready to taste the first wine...I am noticing the rather generous pour that has occurred...and I am worried...if this is how they poor down here, this is going to be a loooooong day for me. As I am not really into the whole wine thing, I really don't pay much attention to anything about the wineries as far as research goes, but the one thing I do know is that there is a winery that is run by a lady from Edmonton. For some reason this tiny fact has stuck in my head since I read it in the EnRoute magazine about 2 months ago...but I don't really remember the name of the winery, but Warwick could be it. I tell Kim I think it is Warwick...she is doubtful. After 3 or 4 glasses, we are chatting with the young lady who is doing the tasting for us and Kim asks if there is a Canadian connection to the winery. The young lady says, no I don't think so, but let me ask the owner. Turns out, this is the winery. The lady left Edmonton in 1972 and now her children run the Estate...small world. This winery is very low on the wine snob scale, probably about a 2 out of 10.

Our next winery is Kanonkop (or something like this). When we walk in the tasting room there are about 5 Americans there tasting already. Kim casually walks around the room, then sorta brushes by the tasting counter...the woman from the winery doesn't really acknowledge us for about 2-3 minutes...my wine snob scale has just hit a spike of 8. When the woman does welcome us up to the counter, she is really much more interested in the Americans, but tolerates us at the same time. Once the Americans leave, it is just the wine lady and us...let the wine snob talk begin. They produce 4 wines. Kim tries all 4. Big surprise. As Kim and the lady begin to discuss each wine, I am hearing Kim-"oh, I smell strawberry and chocolate"...Wine Lady (WL)-"just last weekend I paired this with chocolate the other evening, went over fabulously, if you have the right chocolate...bitter dark, of course"...K-"now that there is food associated with it, I can taste the combination, delightful"...then there is me rolling my eyes! The dialogue continues...and since I had to sit through it...so do you...WL-"can you smell cherries?"....K-"YES!"...WL-"I couldn't before one of our clients mentioned it, it is blah blah cherry from over blah blah there"...K-"now all I can smell is the cherry"...wine 3...after Kim has rinsed her glass with water, WL-"we don't want to taste water, let's rinse that out with wine" - as she rinses out with wine...oh my god. WL-"now smell this glass (the one Kim just drank out of)...when it is empty you get the true smells...less blah blah per mL"...K-"wow, that is intense"...now the 4th wine...WL-"this one has cigar and berry tones, after being aged in French and American Oak"...K-"oh yes"...WL-"and banana (pronounced in a thick South African accent, doesn't sound like banana)...I mean banana (North American accent)"...K-whimsical laugh...me snob scale is hitting 12. I don't think we can top this winery, but Kim is going to give it a try.

The comparisons of wine to other smelly objects is always interesting...we had cigars, chocolate, cherry, banana, strawberry, black tea, oaky...I am sure there were a few more, but I only had the inspiration to pay attention for a blog entry half way through the day. Lucky for me, the pours weren't all quite as aggressive as the first spot, but Kim was feeling pretty good by the end (8 wineries in total). The other comment that made me laugh was..."I like the Shiraz, it is so up front"...

As we found out, it is easier to find a secret wine in BC than South Africa. Only one winery we visited didn't export to Canada (my pick, last one of the day was chosen by me do to their excellent logo). We only purchased a case of wine...very surprising to me!!

For dinner last night we went to a steak joint which boasts the largest wine bar with wine by the glass in the world - 130 wines by the glass. We were expecting a bit of a tacky place, but it turned out to be great. You wouldn't think Kim would get as excited as she did about a wine bar after having toured around wineries all day, but she was beside herself. Once we sat down at our table, our waiter sent the sommelier over to our table. The sommelier asked us where we were from - once she heard Canada, she started speaking French to Kim (I think they were talking about me). Turns out the sommelier is from France and followed her husband to South Africa.

The restaurant has a great set up for the wine by the glass. They have a system like what is used for draft beer. Each wine has a big straw into it and nitrogen fills up the empty space, so the wine stays perfect. The average wine is up there for 3 weeks...very interesting. Kim is starring at the wine tapping system and claims she needs one herself, not 130 wines, of course...just 12 or so...such modesty.

We haven't seen Table Mountain yet, covered in the famous "Table Clothe" so far...

G (&k)