South African Wines Part Eight: Robertson

The opportunity to participate in a Hands on Harvest brought us out from Cape Town to the Robertson Wine Valley for some bonus tastings. Robertson is a little further out than our usual haunts in the Cape Winelands. About two hours from Cape Town, it is about halfway to the Garden Route.

First stop, Graham Beck, home to fine Methode Cap Classique (MCC), fine Sauvignon Blanc and fine red blends. Graham Beck is a legend in South Africa and his vast farm, Madeba with its steel, glass and corrugated iron winery building on Route 62 is like a monument to his elevated stature in South Africa.

Graham Beck Winery

A former mining and horse-breeding magnate, Beck is driven by bubbles. The bubbles of MCC. We bought three of his 2012 Cuvee Clive untasted (it is not available for tasting).  

And we also bought three of the Ad Honorem (again not available for tasting.) Out of the wines we did taste, we especially liked The Ridge Syrah and bought a couple of those as well.

According to John and Erica Platter's Africa Uncorked, The Ridge is a single vineyard wine from a block rooted in red limestone and had recently been picked by Decanter magazine as one of the top Shirazes in its price bracket. A Shiraz predicted to become Graham Beck's super-premium label

Robertson itself is not an especially pretty town but it does have its quaint spots. It is mainly home to the mega-powerhouse 10-million litre Robertson Winery with its 43 owners. And next door to Robertson Winery is the Klipdrift Distillery, which makes one of South Africa's best-loved brandies.

cool herald weathervane

Fraai Uitzicht

We tried weeks before coming to Robertson to get a reservation for dinner at the wine estate Fraai Uitzicht but it was completely full with guests who were staying on the estate. We drove over anyway to check to see if there were any last minute cancellations, but no luck.

I did have a back up reservation at the Robertson Small Hotel though. Change that forecast to good luck!

Their in-house restaurant Reuben's was fabulous. A hidden jewel in Robertson. Not really all that hidden actually, but their sophisticated menu featuring upmarket bistro offerings seemed better suited to us than the local farm fare at Fraai Uitzicht. Maybe next time.

We wanted to "drink local" and left it to the sommelier to chose two selections from the Robertson Wine Valley. He chose Springfield Estate's the Work of Time (2008) for dinner and for dessert, the 2012 White Muscadel Weltevrede Ouma se Wyn.

Vince loved them both so much that we stopped to pick more up at the Robertson Wine Shop on our way out of town to take home with us to Joburg!

beautiful gardens at the Robertson Small Hotel

We spent the following day at the Excelsior Wine Estate in nearby Ashton for a Hands On Harvest and of course we tasted some wine there too. This visit was a mere toe dip in the Robertson and Worcester pool. We will be back!

Dunes and Vleis

Everybody knows what a dune is.











But what is a vlei? Vlei is Afrikaans for a shallow minor lake, mostly of a seasonal or intermittent nature. They can be freshwater, saltwater or brackish. Often they remain a viable body of water like the vleis we saw in Sedgefield on the Garden Route in South Africa. But over time a vlei may degrade into a salt pan or a clay pan such as the vleis of the Namib  Desert around Sesriem, Deadvlei, Sossusvlei and Narravlei.

With little precipitation and temperatures like this in the early morning hours and at the onset of Spring, it is no wonder the vleis around Sossus dried up.

Next Year's Christmas Tree

My neighbor Merry clued me in to a common "Christmas Tree" in South Africa. It is sparse but it is perfectly shaped and very strong. But it is actually not a tree at all. It is the flower which grows in the middle of the giant Agave americana, a native plant of tropical America. It is also commonly and confusingly called an American aloe, although it is not an aloe at all. Merry has one where she teaches school. The teachers take turns every year cutting it down for use as their home Christmas tree.

The Agave americana occurs in abundance in the Karoo and the arid highland regions of South Africa. Introduced by the British settlers in 1820, the plant was originally cultivated and used as emergency feed for livestock and it is everywhere. Today when cultivated, it is used mainly for the production of syrup and sugar.

I first saw these huge flowering agaves in the Ruth Bancroft Garden east of Oakland, California. The Ruth Bancroft Garden is the first garden selected in North America to be preserved by the Garden Conservancy. My garden club friend Barbara is a docent there and she took me on a tour of Ruth's garden during the Garden Conservancy's open visiting days. She told me that the agaves mature very slowly and die after flowering, but are easily propagated by the offsets from the base of the stem. 

I remember distinctly thinking at the time that the flowers did look like they would make great Christmas trees. Who knew?

Here they are in buckets outside a shop in picturesque De Rust in the Klein Karoo.

And I guess this must be the South African equivalent of an American Christmas Tree Farm!

"O Christmas tree!...

O Christmas tree! ...

Could this be next year's Christmas tree?" *



* sung to the tune of O Tannenbaum.

African Sunset, Knysna Style

The Drydock Food Company on the Knysna Quays is a great place to go for ...

... an African sunset ...

... or an African Sunset!
















Especially after a round of golf ...

... on the green. Talk about a water hazard!

"Fore!"










The clean up crew!

Holiday on The Garden Route

We spent the week between Christmas and New Year's exploring the Garden Route in the Western Cape. The Garden Route basically consists of the villages and national parks stretching along the N2 from Mossel Bay to Tsisikamma and the Storms River Mouth. It is an extraordinarily beautiful place! Here are some of the highlights:

Muscles, Mussels and Fossils in Mossel Bay

Besides being the home of our Shark Dive and the Champion "Post Office Tree" in the middle of the Bartolomeu Dias Museum Complex, Mossel Bay has much to recommend itself.

It has beautiful beaches, one of which was a stop on the largest inflatable boat race in the world, the Trans Agulhas Challenge. We watched it from the deck of the very accommodating Mossel Bay Yacht and Boat Club.

It was amazing to see these boats come flying from their start in Plettenberg Bay and run aground at the finish line in the middle of the crowded Mossel Bay Beach. Nerves and muscles of steel!

There were more muscles hard at work excavating one of the newer sites of one of the oldest Middle Stone Age humankind habitats in the world, the archaeological site at Pinnacle Point. A team of international experts have been busy studying ancient fossils left behind at the Pinnacle Point Caves, quite possibly the world’s first-ever seafood restaurant – albeit a self-service establishment.

But neither of those are the mossels that Mossel Bay was named for. It was named for the abundance of edible mussels in the bay. We had them at the Portuguese hotspot Bahia Dos Vaqueiros, but they are available everyone. Delicioso.






Gorgeous George 

George is veddy English having been named after the supposed illegitimate son of King George III, dontcha know? George Rex, who lived on the nearby Melkhoutkraul estate, neither confirmed nor denied his lineage to his dying day. George has beautiful Cape Georgian architecture and is the site of the Outeniqua Transport Museum.











Alas, the Outeniqua Choo-Yjoe steam train does not run anymore. The line was wrecked after flooding in 2009 and is currently "indefinitely" closed. Or in South African parlance, it will reopen "just now."

Alex was very disappointed as were we. We all have a soft spot for steam trains having lived in a former train station in Fanwood, NJ for 25 years. There is still hope ...

Wilderness is Wild

We drove up into the wilderness of Wilderness National Park and after all of our car travel, we took many much-needed hikes through its yellowwood, milkwood, ironwood and stinkwood forests.

The views were stupendous! You could see the many lakes on one side and the Indian Ocean on the other side of the narrow strip of barrier island along the Garden Route.







We stayed in Sedgefield 

We stayed in a cottage in the centrally located Garden Route village of Sedgefield. It was a quiet respite set on the dunes in the middle of the interlocking inland  lakes and the Indian Ocean.

There are several lakes strung along the N2 - the Langvlei, Rondevlei, the Swartvlei and the Groenvlei - and they called to us every day, "Come sailing, Kastens!" But as hard as we tried, we could not find a boat to rent.

This hobie sat on our shore unloved and unsailed the entire week we were there. No one seemed to know how to get in touch with the owner who was clearly taking his holiday elsewhere! We managed to get the names of some other boat owners from the Mossel Bay Yacht & Boat Club whom we will contact before our next visit outside of high season.

On either side of Sedgefield were a couple of wonderful Saturday food and craft markets.

We were able to fully stock up with the meats and veggies, the fresh bread, herbs and sauces that we needed for a week full of evening braais ...









... and the wine and snacks we needed for our nightly card and 30 Seconds game nights too.












Knysna is Nice

Knysna is a lovely town that could easily have come intact to South Africa straight from Cape Cod or Marin County. In the words of Yogi Berra or John Fogerty even, it was like "déjà vu all over again."

Knysna is the home of the July Oyster Festival but luckily the little devils are available all year round from the oyster farms on Thesen Island and from ocean beds in Plett Bay.

And to wash those oysters down, we turned to Knysna's other culinary delight, the largest independent brewery in South Africa, Mitchell's Brewery.

Vince first tasted Mitchell's beer at the Jozi Craft Beer Fest last May and he insisted we stop in for a fresh beer and a sample tour and taste. Lucky we did because this was a farewell tour of sorts.

Mitchell's is moving to bigger digs come early 2014. The beer has been brewed by Lew Mitchell and now Dave McRae (who has been with Mitchell's since 1984) in its original home plant and brewpub for the past 30 years using hops grown locally all along Mossel Bay.












We found Mitchell's right in the middle of its big move to its new home right on the Knysna Quays. Its production is going to double and its beer garden is going to feature a full restaurant after the move. The increased production will make their distribution centers happy in Joburg and Durban. They insist that their quality will not falter with the increased production and there are currently no plans to distribute outside of South Africa. This will make Vince happy too!

Knysna is also the home of the largest indigenous forest in South Africa. The Knysna Forest was once home to the last remaining forest elephants in the world. Their descendents are now safely settled in Knysna Elephant Sanctuary along with some of South Africa's other orphaned, rescued and culled elephants.




Plett Bay has Plenty
 
Plettenberg Bay has plenty to do. We did not do any of it ... except eat some of its excellent oysters. There was just too much to do along the rest of the Garden Route and we prefer to come back and visit Plett Bay outside of the busy holiday week when the beaches and restaurants are teeming with vacationers. Then we will be able to just stay put at the lovely Beacon Island Hotel and never leave!

Full Stop in Swellendam

We stopped in for lunch in the cute little town of Swellendam on the drive over from the Garden Route to Gordon's Bay and Cape Town.

It is a little architectural gem.
















And speaking of little gems, The Arch is coming!

 The Full Stop Cafe for some lunch ...
















... with a sense of humour on the side.