Skinkikofi continued to impress us when we got up this morning. A
fabulous shower was followed by a very tasty breakfast and Marius
providing us with lots of local recommendations of places to go to
and vineyards to visit. He told us that they had bought this B&B
about four years ago, ran it for a year and then closed it for two
years to totally refurbish it. It is a historic building so all
changes and renovations had to get prior approval. It has definitely
been a labour of love but one that has yielded a fabulous end
result.
We started our day with a visit to KWV, the largest wine
producer in the area. Gone was the family run business feeling we
had had from the vineyards we have visited so far. This was very
definitely a big commercial enterprise and everything about it
seemed to be about making wine in volume to earn enough money to
keep shareholders happy rather than it being about the passion of
making good wines. Started in 1918, KWV was a cooperative until the
mid 1990’s when it turned into a share based company, with shares
open to all only from 2003. The company’s website lists a whole
stack of accolades for its wines and brandies as well as showing it
to be at the forefront of innovation and market development for
South African wines.
But, at KWV if you want to see their operation you have to
hand over cash and go on a tour. It starts with a short video about
the history of the company and is in effect a sales pitch for KWV,
their size and how good a company they are. They take you through to
their “cathedral”, a cavernous room that houses their wine vats.
Each one is enormous in its own right and there are more than 20 of
them in total. Our guide gave us some of the production statistics
for the company – millions of bottles of wine, millions of litres of
grape juice – again a stark contrast to the production volumes we
have encountered so far. Their cellar is home to thousands of
barrels of wine all aging and waiting to be bottled as well as the
oldest and largest wine vats in the world. Yet more bigger, better,
sooner statistics to add to their collection.
Our tour ended with a tasting of a selection of their wines.
The rest of the people in our group were all South African, an
extended family here in Paarl for a university rugby competition in
which one of them was competing. Among their contingent was an
assistant wine maker from one of the other vineyards in the area. He
was a good check and balance to the tour guide and also gave us
hints and tips on tasting. I have to say that their wines were good
and their award winning Imoya brandy was also very tasty.
Unfortunately the US market has already snapped up all of the
production volume of the latter.
From the heights of KWV we came back down to earth and spent
the rest of our day touring around some of the smaller vineyards.
Our first stop was at Kloovenburg which is renowned for its olives
as well as its wines. Both were tasty but the best of the morning
was yet to come at Allesverloren, which means all is lost. The
estate dates back to the end of the 1600’s to a time when long
journeys were required to get to the shops and church services at
Stellenbosch. Returning from one of those journeys in 1704 the
family found their farm burnt to the ground with everything lost,
hence the name.
Marius had told us that Allesverloren’s speciality was port.
Here they grow a different selection of grapes to most of the other
vineyards and this is then reflected in their port. We worked our
way through a selection of the wines, eagerly awaiting the port
tasting and it was as good as we had hoped. It is a port unlike any
other port I have ever tried and was light, tasty and not
overpowering. Quite simply it was superb in my view.
Sniff, sniff, lovely bouquet
We stopped at Café Felix just down the road for a quick bite
of lunch and an opportunity to soak up some of the wine we’d been
drinking. From the outside it looked as if it would be a really
smart bistro with unusual fare on the menu but it turned out to be
quite ordinary, tasty but nothing to recommend it. There was also a
definite Afrikaaner air about the place where people glared down
their noses at you when you made eye contact rather than giving a
friendly smile. Ah well.
The afternoon took us to Jacaranda, a small vineyard which we
both decided was very much the owner’s hobby. As we pulled up to
what looked like a deserted and closed up place a couple of very
friendly dogs bounded up to say hello followed a few minutes later
by a lady. She told us that her husband was just coming, he was
dragging himself away from the rugby, not a great match he later
told us. The vineyard is a small field at the front of his property
and I got the feeling that he mainly makes the wines just for
himself and for something to do. The cellar was an old round
reservoir which the former owners had shrunk in size when it started
to leak, creating the ideal cool spot for the wine. He was a
friendly chap and seemed fixated that I looked just like his niece.
We tried his wines, not the worst we’ve had but certainly not up
there with the others, and felt obliged to buy a bottle before we
headed off.
Our last stop was the Diemersfontein Vineyard. This was set in
a small gated and guarded estate where it looks like some of the
land is being turned over to luxury property development. The
tasting room was in a small restaurant/conference venue with views
out over a lake. We could quite easily have snatched a couple of
bottles off the shelf and done a runner as it took quite some time
for someone to put in an appearance to do the tasting session for
us. He was a friendly enough guy and knowledgeable abut his wines
but he’d obviously spotted we weren’t going to buy a case full and
was more focussed on sorting out some admin than on wowing us with
his produce. They do make a very chocolaty Pinotage though which was
very tasty.
By this stage it was quite late in the day so we made our way
back to Paarl and our room at Skinkikofi. Marius’s wife Diana works
within the wine trade exporting wine from a local company out to
Belgium. The wine is a Barbera, again a variety that is not common
in this area. He brought us a bottle to take with us tonight for
dinner (most places seem OK with bring you own). Yet again it was a
very tasty wine which we both enjoyed. I suspect though that Marius
had thought we would enjoy it with something a bit more refined than
a pizza at the local Dros restaurant but it went down very nicely
thank you.
