Another winey day

I’ve noticed that small set-backs on a journey often result in the most pleasant and memorable experiences.

Ethene and I are staying at a friend’s house in the Hemel-en-Aarde valley near Hermanus, and finding it a very convenient base from which to explore the wineries in the area.

But there’s a problem. The house has no cell-phone reception and we need that in order to send off our daily blog and keep up with e-mails.

So we do our writing, enter it into the computer, then bumble about, holding up our cell-phones from time to time in order to check whether there’s any coverage.

We must look like a couple of total twits, stopping our scooters every few kilometres and holding cell-phones up in the air.

Yesterday we decided to try e-mailing from the delightful Heaven restaurant on the Newton Johnson Vineyards estate.

As we sat in the tasting room, waiting to make an internet connection, Dave Johnson, the genial owner of the farm came in, spotted us and invited us to a tasting, followed by lunch. We ended up having a very congenial meal accompanied by the deliciously subtle Newton Johnson and Felicité wines.

I particularly enjoyed his “No Oak” chardonnay, while Ethene, who is not a white wine enthusiast, liked the 2007 Newton Johnson Syrah Mourvedre best. 

This family-run cellar is not very big, but is certainly cleverly designed to take advantage of its steep mountainside site so all the wine can be moved by gravity, rather than by using pumps.

We did an exploratory detour along a narrow, winding dirt road to the relatively new Creation winery. New concrete buildings still looking awkwardly new among the craggy mountains andwell-manicured vineyards.

I liked their grassy, fresh Sauvignon Blanc, packed with crisp green apple flavours, and also an unusually deep coloured first release Pinot Noir.

Later we visited the Hamilton Russell Vineyards and their satellite cellar, Southern Right.

Anthony Hamilton Russell is an innovative wine maker and is constantly experimenting with different methods and techniques in the vineyard and cellar. One of these is the fermentation of wines in large ceramic amphorae instead of using the more conventional tanks or barrels.

The vessels are lined with clay from the vineyard in which the grapes were grown, in order to continue their relationship with the soil. The must was still fermenting when we visited, and I enjoyed the lively granadilla character of the cloudy new wine. I look forward to tasting the end result.

Most winemakers claim their vines are influenced by the breezes from the sea, but Anthony is going one step closer to the ocean. A  batch of his wine has been lowered to the sea bed in 10 metres of water to mature. It will be exciting to discover how it fares in real  marine conditions.

Divers will soon be sent down to raise a bottle or two for the first tasting.

I’ve been impressed by the way our little scooters have coped with gravel roads in the valley, some of which are teeth-rattlingly corrugated.

The last three or four kilometres to our borrowed home is dirt road and we drove home rather late last night without any trouble after an excellent dinner in Hermanus  in the company of Talita, Hamilton Russell’s dynamic sales person, and Bristol wine buyer Mimi Avery.

I can report that Harbour Rock restaurant in Hermanus makes a stunningly good seafood risotto.

An aspiring tenor in ragged jeans serenaded us with “O Sole Mio” as we left the car park.

Not a bad voice, actually, and it probably earns him a few rands a night from replete departing diners.

Certainly better than being a “car guard.”

Wednesday dawns clear and cool with a fair breeze and we are setting off to Napier and then Cape Aghulas after we’ve had breakfast and packed the scooters. Computer and cell-phone batteries are charged and read to go.