The fame of South Africa’s vineyards has spread around the world – and with good reason. The earliest Dutch governors planted vines on their estates in the 1600s, and the French Huguenots, fleeing religious persecution arrived not long after with refined vinter skills.
Today, a wine tasting expedition is a ‘must’ – and Steven, our local guide, chose the Rastenberg winery to show us the craft at its finest. The approach to the estate is impressive. At the fortified gate, our credentials and reservation are checked and we begin the long climb between small workers cottages, fields of crops and grazing cows and dense woodlands, before arriving at the bottom of a sweeping lawn.
Above us, set against a backdrop of mature trees and the sheer cliffs of the “Red mountain”, sits an impressive white Cape Dutch manor house, built several hundred years ago and still the seat of the wine-making family. Their other passion, it turns out, is gardening, and several acres beside the house are given over to vast formal gardens. During the South African spring, the beds are awash in colour.
We’re led through our ‘tasting’ by an experienced sommeliere whose passion for the wine is rivalled only by her desire to tell us stories of her own safaris to Kruger. Once again, we feel the genuine warm welcome of South Africaners. Francisco, of course, picks up 4 bottles, some of which he plans to bring home in his luggage, among them a smooth un-oaked Chardonnay called “5 soldiers” and an amazing red called Pieter Barlow 2006.
From South Africa’s famed Stellenbosch wine region, the little village of Montagu is a short drive
over the mountains. Here, the air is crystal clear, the light is an artist-friendly white and birds create the sound-track. Far from the main highways, life moves at the pace of a by-gone era.
It sits at the gateway to the Little Karoo - a semi-arid region that is sunnier than Capetown but cooler than the arid regions further north. Set comfortably in a broad, bowl-shaped valley, it is surrounded by the Langeburg mountains, red and green flecked ramparts of fractured, folded sandstone that thrust jagged chimney profiles into the clear, blue sky.
During more prosperous times, European settlers built compact, beautiful houses in styles that reminded them of home, but using local materials:
- Cape Dutch with the steep, reed-thatched roofs and false-front ornate facades or half-hip gables
- Cape Georgian, flat-roofed, with bold, square, 2-storey facades, a central door and five large windows,
- Cape Victorian – 1 ½ storey cottages with gingerbread ironwork on steep-pitched gables and long, low porches.
Each of the houses is whitewashed and surrounded by red and orange bougainvillea-draped walls and well-tended gardens awash in riots of roses, protea and other exotic, unfamiliar flowers. Towering Jacaranda trees add a faint dash of purple to the sky overhead.
During a pre-dinner walk, the surrounding cliffs glowed ochre in the setting sun, we felt we had the entire village to ourselves, happily walking down the centre of the broad avenues to get the best camera angles.
Our lodgings for the night were at the Montagu Country hotel - an elegant set-piece of 1920s post-colonial South Africa. The entrance lobby opens onto a tidy bar, furnished in the clean angles and massive shapes of original Art Deco furniture, where we had cocktails with owner/manager Gert Lubbe before dinner. He clearly takes pride in the skilled pianist who serenaded our martinis with familiar show tunes. We moved into dinner in the candle lit, white linen draped formal dining room, to enjoy an elegant, lengthy meal, with local delicacies (lamb stew perfectly delicate in a just-right pastry purse, and minced beef under a cap of savoury custard) washed down by a fine wine from nearby Robertson, all served by lovely, well-trained staff. Digestives, in the lounge elicited colourful stories from Gert of his decades in the hospitality industry – but always with an ear open to the needs of all of his guests. A hotelier in the true sense, Gert sees the Montague Country Hotel as a reflection of the free-wheeling intra-war period –a deco, anything goes elegance when “style” was a means and an end.
The drive back to Capetown the next day, took us through some of the most exhilarating landscapes we have ever seen. We skirted steep, clean-sloped mountain ranges, endless walls that brushed the clouds, and when they opened up to broad, rolling, wheat-gold fields we drifted down to the sea.
Hermanus’ steep cliffs and deep bay are a favourite breeding and calving spot, for the Southern Right Whale in the Indian Ocean. No sooner had we arrived at the cliff top promenade, than a massive tail rose out of the water a few hundred meters off shore, and languidly saluted us before slipping below the surface.
Over the next few minutes we were treated to a number of additional sightings, and entertained by an adolescent calf who breached repeatedly and fell back-first into the water for several minutes before snuggling against his/her mother.
The town turns its face to the sea with a well-kept promenade and numerous glass fronted restaurants. So we took the time for a leisurely lunch with clear sightlines out to the deep bay and its huge inhabitants.
And as if that weren’t excitement enough, our drive along the South Western coast took us through a landscape that could only be compared to Big Sur – Steep-sloped mountains sweeping down into the pounding turf of the open ocean – in a long sweep towards Capetown. With so much to take in, it was still a struggle to keep from dozing off. Luckily Steven was at the wheel.
Today, a wine tasting expedition is a ‘must’ – and Steven, our local guide, chose the Rastenberg winery to show us the craft at its finest. The approach to the estate is impressive. At the fortified gate, our credentials and reservation are checked and we begin the long climb between small workers cottages, fields of crops and grazing cows and dense woodlands, before arriving at the bottom of a sweeping lawn.
Above us, set against a backdrop of mature trees and the sheer cliffs of the “Red mountain”, sits an impressive white Cape Dutch manor house, built several hundred years ago and still the seat of the wine-making family. Their other passion, it turns out, is gardening, and several acres beside the house are given over to vast formal gardens. During the South African spring, the beds are awash in colour.We’re led through our ‘tasting’ by an experienced sommeliere whose passion for the wine is rivalled only by her desire to tell us stories of her own safaris to Kruger. Once again, we feel the genuine warm welcome of South Africaners. Francisco, of course, picks up 4 bottles, some of which he plans to bring home in his luggage, among them a smooth un-oaked Chardonnay called “5 soldiers” and an amazing red called Pieter Barlow 2006.
From South Africa’s famed Stellenbosch wine region, the little village of Montagu is a short drive
over the mountains. Here, the air is crystal clear, the light is an artist-friendly white and birds create the sound-track. Far from the main highways, life moves at the pace of a by-gone era.It sits at the gateway to the Little Karoo - a semi-arid region that is sunnier than Capetown but cooler than the arid regions further north. Set comfortably in a broad, bowl-shaped valley, it is surrounded by the Langeburg mountains, red and green flecked ramparts of fractured, folded sandstone that thrust jagged chimney profiles into the clear, blue sky.
During more prosperous times, European settlers built compact, beautiful houses in styles that reminded them of home, but using local materials:
- Cape Dutch with the steep, reed-thatched roofs and false-front ornate facades or half-hip gables
- Cape Georgian, flat-roofed, with bold, square, 2-storey facades, a central door and five large windows,
- Cape Victorian – 1 ½ storey cottages with gingerbread ironwork on steep-pitched gables and long, low porches.
Each of the houses is whitewashed and surrounded by red and orange bougainvillea-draped walls and well-tended gardens awash in riots of roses, protea and other exotic, unfamiliar flowers. Towering Jacaranda trees add a faint dash of purple to the sky overhead.
During a pre-dinner walk, the surrounding cliffs glowed ochre in the setting sun, we felt we had the entire village to ourselves, happily walking down the centre of the broad avenues to get the best camera angles.
Our lodgings for the night were at the Montagu Country hotel - an elegant set-piece of 1920s post-colonial South Africa. The entrance lobby opens onto a tidy bar, furnished in the clean angles and massive shapes of original Art Deco furniture, where we had cocktails with owner/manager Gert Lubbe before dinner. He clearly takes pride in the skilled pianist who serenaded our martinis with familiar show tunes. We moved into dinner in the candle lit, white linen draped formal dining room, to enjoy an elegant, lengthy meal, with local delicacies (lamb stew perfectly delicate in a just-right pastry purse, and minced beef under a cap of savoury custard) washed down by a fine wine from nearby Robertson, all served by lovely, well-trained staff. Digestives, in the lounge elicited colourful stories from Gert of his decades in the hospitality industry – but always with an ear open to the needs of all of his guests. A hotelier in the true sense, Gert sees the Montague Country Hotel as a reflection of the free-wheeling intra-war period –a deco, anything goes elegance when “style” was a means and an end.
The drive back to Capetown the next day, took us through some of the most exhilarating landscapes we have ever seen. We skirted steep, clean-sloped mountain ranges, endless walls that brushed the clouds, and when they opened up to broad, rolling, wheat-gold fields we drifted down to the sea.Hermanus’ steep cliffs and deep bay are a favourite breeding and calving spot, for the Southern Right Whale in the Indian Ocean. No sooner had we arrived at the cliff top promenade, than a massive tail rose out of the water a few hundred meters off shore, and languidly saluted us before slipping below the surface.
Over the next few minutes we were treated to a number of additional sightings, and entertained by an adolescent calf who breached repeatedly and fell back-first into the water for several minutes before snuggling against his/her mother.
The town turns its face to the sea with a well-kept promenade and numerous glass fronted restaurants. So we took the time for a leisurely lunch with clear sightlines out to the deep bay and its huge inhabitants.
And as if that weren’t excitement enough, our drive along the South Western coast took us through a landscape that could only be compared to Big Sur – Steep-sloped mountains sweeping down into the pounding turf of the open ocean – in a long sweep towards Capetown. With so much to take in, it was still a struggle to keep from dozing off. Luckily Steven was at the wheel.
