Wine!!!! More dangerous than Sharks!

With a sub heading, Glasses not Thimbles and 30 degree heat – what do you expect?

OK, as you know – no blog yesterday due to me being drunk!  But I will cover yesterday’s antics here and you will understand ,

Firstly, I should talk about where we are staying – Ashbourne Guest house in Franschhoek – What3words Mouthed.limitations.sparrows

Absolutely delightful! This place is so subtlety 5* from the initials in the railings which circle the property, to the name printed on napkins, to the snacks they leave out for the guests to the complementary whiskey, brandy and wine for guests.  Not to mention the pool area and all of the little touches in our room – bathrobes, heated floor in the bathroom, fridge with complementary water and the beautiful balcony area to sit on.  Our room is so private too, we are upstairs with a fabulous view of the mountains – Highly recommended!

So, back to the wine tram.

We drove from Cape Town and managed to miss most of the traffic, so when we got here we asked if we could change our ticket time to an earlier tram – well, we tried to, some very important South African Ladies decided they could skip the line up and be served first – I was very restrained….. it turned out we have 30 seconds to spare till the next departure, but they let us switch tickets – as with all annoying people, those ladies who lunch dogged our  every move – they were so entitled, bossing the waiters about, switiching reserved signs on the table because they wanted to sit there, commandeering two sun umbrellas so none of them were in the sun – I guess that breed of person is worldwide… we were delighted when one of the brollies got caught by the wind and went flying! Karma x2

First stop on the wine tram for us was Rickety Bridge.  As we approached, we were given a complementary glass of chardonay – it was explained as being citrusy, and it actually was! It was lovely (glass 1).  We had a recommendation to go with the ‘foundation package’ and who were we to argue with that?  It turned out that the ‘foundation package was 5 wines. 

We were expecting ‘tastes’ i.e. a thimbleful – oh no, you got a full UK wine glass measure for each one!  (6 glasses total now)  I started dutifully taking notes, but I must admit, as the day wore on and autocorrect kicked in, I am not sure what my notes say, however: all of the Rickety Bridge wines are named after aspects of life

Chardonnay – citrus

Rose – music – no skin = no hangover

Sauvignon Blanc -  nautical navigation – cooler, balanced acidity

Chenin Blanc, most planted grape in South Africa. Has texture and notes of gooseberry, pear and peach

Penotage – fire - grape from 1925, a cross pollination with French grapes, but born in South Africa.  Silky smooth, notes of black cherry

Cabernet Sauvignon – tools – bold, but not a bulldozer.

Merlot – timekeepers – enjoy with family and friends – Cheer and blackcurrant

Shiraz – Asian Wolf whisperer – tamed spices white pepper and blackcurrent.

I am not even sure that all makes sense, but it is as I wrote it at the time 😊

Side note - this pic on the tram made me chuckle - no drinking wine!

From Rickety Bridge we got back on the tram, transferred to a bus and went up to Dieu Donne Winery.  Now I preferred the wines at Rickety Bridge, but the views from Dieu Donne cannot be beaten!  By this point we were already a bit drunk, so we ordered the cheese and meat nibbles and EJ had the wine and brownie pairing and I had the wine and chocolate pairing.

Both delicious, but if you are expecting a description of the wine, you will be disappointed – I did write descriptions, but auto correct and my tiddlyness make them unreadable!

Here are some pics from the vinyard though

We had actually planned to visit another winery – thank god we ran out of time!  We made it home and decided to stay in – EJ went and raided the snack stash left out for guests and we had a picnic tea while watching a truly dreadful move called ‘Strays’.  I did try to write a blog – but I was just too intoxicated!  I have glossed over the fact that EJ got locked in the kitchen – but when I show you the key, you will understand.

Every door has a different colour button and you have to press the right button – when it is dark, it is quite tricky to see (when you are drunk, it is also tricky!).  I thought she had been gone a long time, but not long enough that I was worried – I was drunk too!  She finally made it back after pressing every button and one of them worked.

We had quite an eventful night – I was snoring so loudly that I woke myself up and at one point said ‘Oh, was that me?’ but my voice must have been croaky, because that woke EJ up and she thought a stranger was in the room – she was too terrified to move and just forced herself back to sleep….. good job it WAS only me!

On to today.  We went in search of a waterfall today – we didn’t find it, but we had an adventure.  I mean, what could go wrong….. we got lost, drove the wrong way in the national park, realised we had gone the wrong way and turned round, and then set off what we though was an easy 1.2km hike…. An hour later and when we reached a via ferrata we realised we were on the wrong trail, so we cut our losses and went swimming in a lovely isolated pool.  It was cold but refreshing and crystal clear water.  Much to EJ’s disgust I filled my water bottle in the stream – as I said, better to have the sh!@s than die of heatstroke….

At that point EJ ticked another thing off her to do list and went skinny dipping! There were only the two of us there, so she was perfectly safe, until she just got her bikini back on and some walkers came along the trail – timing is everything 😊

When we got to the car we realised the trail was one way, and I had already turned the car round, so I had to reverse all the was pack down the hill and across a tiny bridge to find a space to turn around again.  We have a little video of the road – well, road is a strong word….

The trail certainly gave us what they call an African Massage – we hit every bump!  We made it though! I wasn’t a bus driver for nothing.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/ccc3e4_4b43964bfef14a7d8d0978b1d7e4330a/480p/mp4/file.mp4

We got back to the trail head and stopped for an ice lolly – all they had were vegan ice lollies, so we were surprised to find a fly entombed on one, just how vegan can they be?

Tonight we got our glad rags on and went for a Micheline star dinner at a place called Eleven.  We opted for the taster menu with wine pairing – I think we were up to 8 glasses, so it is no wonder that EJ is asleep as I write this.  Rather than describe the food, I will post a pic of the menu….I had my first ever oyster - hmmmmm.

Off to Hermannus tomorrow for some Whale watching and a detox - and yes, as I type this EJ is snoring her head off!