I'm Drunk

We visited the Wine Lands for an all day tour and wine tasting while in the Cape. It was pretty amazing, especially because I like all things snoby ranging anywhere from espresso to fine chocolate, so this was a great time for me to have 'fine taste.' The vineyards were really interesting and beautiful and the wine making process was very complicated and involved. You can plant a vine and not have a product until 10 years later. I have a small dream of having a vineyard someday, but that fact alone is almost enough to crush it. I could die before I make any wine or grape juice for that matter.

The first pic. is from a winde and cheese farm we went to. The goats had as much wine as we did I think. The wine here was poor, but the cheese was amazing. Except for one. My fine swedish friend recomended it. It was very 'aged' and I almost threw up. The second and last pictures are of the vineyards. They are so beautiful. I really want one. The 3rd picture is of the first farm we visited. The workers are seperating the good from the bad for a desert wine. The desert wine grapes are harvested last, after they have most of the water sucked out of them by bacteria. That means that they are rotten. The low water content makes them sweeter, hence the desert wine. The 4th picture is of the red wine that is aging at the moment in oak barrels. They age for as long as 28 months, but some age more quickly in 3 months time.

We visited 4 or five farms that day, sampling at each. We started drinking at about 9:30, having champagne for breakfast. This is the vineyard where we saw the workers and the barrels. Their wine was very good, and in US dollars affordable. To bad I have no reason to have such fine wine while I'm here, and no way to get it home without it going bad. Agh Shame.

Next I think it was the cheese one, and then maybe another, or perhapse it was lunch, and then maybe another, and at least I remember that we went to a very nice one last. This farm grew olives as well, and had snotty olive oil blended from fine varieties of olives. We didn't sample the oil, but olives were quite nice. It was a new vineyard and they had only made one brandy thus far, and on a small scale. Brany is aged for a very long time, and their next brandy won't be ready till 2011. They are almost all out of their first stock of brandy, but they let us sample it anyway. It was very very strong, and not at all what I am used to. I don't think that I like brandy very much. But here they drink brandy and coke, thats pretty strange to me as well.

After drinking way to much wine, and being very snotty about it, I can smell and taste some of the different notes, see the different colors and know what they mean, and suck it properly through my teeth and on to my tongue, and twirl it in my glass like a pro. I also discovered that I like more than just Merlot. In fact I don't like Merlot all that much. I like Champagne, dry whites, sweet whites, shiraz, and cabernet. But I think I prefer to have them one day at a time.