Wine Tasting!

Just by the title of this entry, I am sure you can all tell that I thoroughly enjoyed this day! Our first stop was at the Ernie Els Estate. We did not drink there because it was still early (9:30 am) and we had a long day ahead. In fact, we were not even going to stop there, but I wanted to see it because Justin had mentioned it to me. 

Next, we stopped at the Waterford estate. This place was absolutely beautiful. We got a short tour of where they have the vats of wine and then into a room that was filled with wine barrels. We decided to do wine tasting here because they paired their wines with chocolate! We had 4 wines: Rose-mary (a white wine made with red grapes),
Kevin Arnold Shiraz paired with masala chai dark chocolate, Waterford Cabernet Sauvignon paired with rock salt dark chocolate, and Heatherleigh paired with rose geranium milk chocolate. The wines were all fantastic and so were the dark chocolates. I did not really enjoy the milk chocolate because of the rose flavoring (and I like dark better).

From there, we drove through the town of Stellenbosch which was where the ideology behind the apartheid started. Stellenbosch is one of the two major areas in the winelands and is where we did all our tasting.

We stopped at the Delaire Graff wine estate for a delicious lunch and some more wine tasting. There were six different wines we tried, Sauvignon Blanc, Coastal Cuvee Sauvignon Blanc, Rosé, Chardonnay, Pinotage, and one more type of red. The Sauvignon Blancs were the best and one of the two was award winning. Although I generally like reds, I was not too fond of the two we had here. 

Our last stop of the day was in the city of Franchoek, the other main area in the winelands. Since Bastille Day was nearing, the town was decorated in the colors of the French flag (red, white, and blue). While we did not taste any wine here, we went into a little chocolate shop called Huegonots. Our guide told us that these are the best truffles in the area. We each picked out 12 chocolates and went our way.

That night, we went down to the waterfront for dinner. Since we had had so many multi course, elaborate meals, we wanted a simple single course dinner. We went to an italian restaurant over looking the water and the food was superb. The owner came by our table and chatted for a second and then sent his grandfather over to shmooze with my grandmother. Now that was entertaining.