The Great Escape Part 1

Happy New Year!  I'm finally back to Napa after a few weeks in South Africa.  The above picture was taken at Cape Point, where the Atlantic and Indian Ocean meet.  You wouldn't want to come home either.

This is Betty's Bay in South Africa, where the penguins live.

This is a crap ton of penguins.  Jackass penguins.

Getting to this amazing place took 31 hours of travel.  SFO to NY(6 hour flight plus 3 hour lay over), then a 16 hour flight from NY to Johannesburg, then a 4 hour lay over and then a 2 hour flight from JoBurg to Cape Town.  Toss in the additional 10 hour time difference and jet lag, which mean that I left SF on Saturday and wasn't functional in SA until Tuesday afternoon.

But, there were penguins and Lions!

Lions are wine-related in that they are both awesome.  These guys were among the many beauties I saw on Safari.  I didn't have a fancy telescopic camera like most everyone else on the tour, these were taken with my iPhone, so you can get an idea of how close we were to them.  Pretty darn close.

Also, I got to ride an ostrich, seriously cool.  These guys can live up to 45 years and sprint up to 40mph.  Ostrich racing, I finally found my sport!

I'm just fitting him for a saddle.

Also, they let you pet cheetahs in Africa.  This was at Speir Wine Farm, that's right, Wine Farm.  All wineries in South Africa have cheetahs.  Not really.  Just some of them.

But we all know Africa has lots of animals, however before my trip I was not familiar with their wine industry.

This is the view driving up to Uva Mira in Stellenbosch.  You can see better pictures at their website, my iPhone is not really nailing it this time.  A friend of mine worked here and recommended we stop by.

The cellar at Uva Mira.

The tasting room was very nice.  I tried some really great wines and wanted to bring some home, however this was my very first stop and I didn't want to spend all my money at once.  But I really enjoyed a 2008 Syrah they had and decided to buy it.  It was 100 Rand, which after the conversion was about $12.  It was actually quite shocking how inexpensive the wine was.  Most places had very nice wine between $10 and $20.  And tastings were $2 or less.

Since it's the southern hemisphere, they were getting ready for harvest (while our vines have shut down and will be pruned soon).

Another friend works at Waterford Estate, so I went to visit him.  They do vineyard safaris, like Gundlach Bundschu.

The winery and tasting room was as lovely (or lovelier) than anything you would find in Napa.

I tried their chocolate tasting, which is the first time I'd ever done a chocolate tasting.

The chocolates were interesting pairings, but I thought the wines showed well on their own.

I brought home the most wine from Waterford.  This was one of the few places that dares to produce expensive wine.  Out of all the wineries I visited, this had the most expensive bottle, a whopping R680.00 ($85) a bottle for the 2007 Jem, I'm told this is extremely rare for South African wine.  I'm a big fan, and even though it wasn't that expensive it's going to take a special occasion for me to open that wine since it flew the 32 hours back with me! (yes the way home was longer than the way there!)

For the most part it felt like wine tasting anywhere else.  The wineries all had their own character outside,

And the insides were all sleek and modern.

I really liked these lamps in the tasting room at Blaauwklippen.

Then I heard that there was sparkling in Stellenbosch, so I had to go check it out.  There was pretty much only 1 winery that made sparkling: JC LaRoux.

Inside, JC LaRoux was very mod and cool.

The hip, lounge-y atmosphere gave me high hopes for their wine.  After a full day of reds, I was looking forward to bubbles.

But don't let the packaging fool you, it was terrible.  Just terrible.

Some of the wine was made in the method champenoise (bottle fermented) and this is what they called Champagne, which is wrong because Champagne can only come from Champagne, France.  Here you can see where the riddle the bottles and see some glass on the floor from where some bottle exploded.(Making sparkling makes you a badass because you can die, or lose some fingers)

But their other stuff, their "sparkling wine" was still wine that was later carbonated.  Like Soda.  But not as good.  Just terrible.

And so ends one day of wine tasting.  Part Two includes visits to other wineries.

I'm back to scraping ice off my car in the mornings, but I'm happy to be back home.

-Lucia