Day Four

The day, hour by hour

• After breakfast

  Out to the Winelands

  By road from the Waterfront, about forty-five minutes, with the Simonsberg and the Helderberg rising ahead.

• Mid-morning

  Backstage in the cellar

  The winemaker meets us with a thief in his hand, the long glass pipette used to draw wine from the barrel. The same cabernet, the same vintage, tasted from French, American and Eastern European oak.

• Late morning

  A wine of their own: the art of the blend

  This is the morning they become winemakers. On a wine farm on the edge of Stellenbosch, in a room beside the river, several wines are laid out in front of them, each made from a single grape, and each with something missing on its own. One has fruit but no backbone, another is firm and serious but a little closed, a third brings perfume and spice. They taste them one by one, then measure, mix, taste again and adjust, until the wine in the glass is exactly the way they like it. Then they give it a name and design its label, which is usually where the laughter starts. We taste each other’s wines, argue a little about whose is best, and raise a glass to the winemakers in the room. They arrive as guests and leave as winemakers.

• 1.00

  Lunch at Stellenrust

  Then the part of the day closest to my heart. We drive out to Stellenrust, the farm my great-grandfather named, where my mother grew up and where I swam in the river pool as a boy. A long table is laid for the group in the garden, or in the hall if the wind is up, with the mountains all around. Cape country cooking is set down in the middle of the table to share, the Chenin from the old bush vines is poured first and then the Shiraz, and somewhere between the two I tell them how the farm got its name. We have not owned it for many years, but for one long afternoon it feels like coming home.

• Mid-afternoon

  Across the valley to Rustenberg

  The estate that started the confusion, still in the Barlow family, with the Simonsberg standing over it. A tasting on the lawn, because by now the story matters more than the wine.

• Evening

  A night at Lanzerac

  Up the oak-lined road into the Jonkershoek Valley as the light turns gold, to a wine estate older than most of the town. The farm was established in 1692, only thirteen years after Stellenbosch itself, by Isaac Schrijver, who planted the first vines and named it Schoongezicht, the beautiful view. In 1920 Kitty English bought it and gave it the name it carries today, said to be after a French general of the Great War, and in 1959 the old homestead became a hotel; that same year the cellar bottled the world’s first commercial Pinotage. The white gable of the Manor House has stood under the oaks since 1830. Dinner tonight is in the Manor Kitchen, in the old house, with a glass of the estate’s own Pinotage, and afterwards a nightcap by the fire in the Craven Lounge, the house’s drawing room, with the mountains dark beyond the windows.

Along the way today

• The Art of the BlendA morning in the winemaker’s shoes, and a wine that is entirely their own.
• StellenrustThe farm my great-grandfather named in 1928, and lunch at a long table.
• StellenboschThe oak-lined university town at the heart of the Winelands.
• RustenbergThe Barlow family estate, across the valley from Stellenrust.
• LanzeracA wine estate in the Jonkershoek Valley, since 1692.

Who is where