#6 - Cape Town - Wine Tasting

We booked a wine tasting a few weeks in advance 😃. South Africa 🇿🇦 is well known for its excellent wines. Therefore, this was part of the must-do list. We were very curious!

According to the company, we were to be picked up from the hotel at 09:00. This meant we could sleep a little longer and enjoy breakfast in peace... Not really! Just as we were about to have breakfast, the reception called us at 8:08 and informed us that our driver/guide was already there... We were quite upset, as we hadn't received that information. So now we were supposed to go to the wine tasting without breakfast!?😅

Suddenly, someone in the entrance area spoke to us in German. We had received a translator from the provider. That's nice 😅. Of course, she was not to blame, and neither was the driver/guide. We asked the hotel to pack some croissants for us to avoid disrupting the tour schedule. That was acceptable.

After that, we were supposed to pick up two more people.... In vain. They didn't want to come along. I suspect they also hadn’t received up-to-date information regarding the pick-up time and it simply felt inappropriate—just like it did for us. In any case, we were the only participants - with a translator and a driver/guide. Let's get started 😅. It took a while for us to warm up a bit.

The wine region is known as Stellenbosch, to our knowledge. At least there is a town nearby with that name. We didn’t quite understand it.

In any case, we arrived at the first winery “Zevenwacht” - an old Dutch wine farm. We didn’t really get a tour on-site – just some information, and we could view a room filled with a lot of wine. Well - but that’s not why we were there, right?😅

There was a description of the individual wines, a brief introduction on what order we would drink the four wines (two white and two red) and when we should eat which cheese with them. Cleanly done, we almost followed that plan 😃! The wines were fine. But they didn’t blow us away. Since we hadn't had a hearty breakfast, we also had to be a bit cautious. I would like to point out: it was only 9:00 AM 🙈.

The start had been made. On our way to the “Marianne” winery, we drove through Stellenbosch. It’s an old Dutch colonial city that, according to the guide, still looks exactly like it did 800 years ago. They consciously preserve it that way. Additionally, there is a very well-known university here. Cape Town has four universities, by the way.

The area around Stellenbosch is beautiful. The “Marianne” winery is set amidst this idyllic scenery. Furthermore, the weather was superb. This truly inspired us to enjoy wine. We could sit on the terrace and enjoy the view. Our wine lady poured us a rosé, a white wine, and then three red wines. Nelson Mandela reportedly tried a wine (during a tasting) that had no name. Since he liked it so much, the wine was eventually sold under his name 😅. This was the last wine during our tasting. Biltong was served with the red wines. This is a specialty in South Africa: dried meat in flavors like springbok (apparently only available in SA), antelope (we believe), and beef. With each wine, we were to consume a specific type of meat. There was a real guide: first, take a sip of wine, swallow, then chew the meat in your mouth, take another sip of wine, mix both in your mouth, and swallow both together 😅🤷🏼‍♂️👍🏻. Overall, the wines were truly very, very delicious. Our wine lady then sat down with us, and we had a lovely chat... The atmosphere improved more and more 😆. But at some point, we had to leave, and that was probably for the best.

On the way back, we had an intense discussion with our translator and driver/guide about South Africa, Germany, politics, economics, and many other topics that we enjoyed very much. It was truly fun – I think they did too. We wouldn’t have thought that after the early morning, but as the tour progressed, we actually enjoyed it a lot. Around 1 PM, they dropped us off at a shopping mall of our choice… eeeeehm, at Elisa's request 😃.

Good night from Dubai Airport 😴