So, up and showered and out to have breakfast by the pool (cereal, juice and tea - bliss!). WE hadn't planned anything for the week so far, but SS had some ideas and I knew which vineyards I wanted to go back to. After breakfast we spent 90 minutes or so just soaking up the sun, then decided to go down to the large Pick n Pay and stock up on our food for the week (I think driven mainly by SS's newfound love of Crosse & Blackwell tangy mayonnaise). We also got dinner stuff, salad, bread, rusks, crisps, beers, checked out the prices of wine in the Pick n Pay wine shop.
We put the shopping in the boot and walked across the road to check prices at the Wine Cellars offlicense. You need to be a little sneaky as SS walks around scribbling down names/vintages/prices, but it is invaluable research before heading to the tasting rooms to know what is available and at what price. There was a sign in the shop saying the prices were all the same or less than at the cellar doors, but I can assure you this was NOT the case.
Back into the car, back home, and I made some tuna mayo salad sandwiches with more green tea for lunch. meanwhile SS went about planning the week with the help of my Blackberry and the Platter's 2012 wine guide. We booked lunch at Hartenberg on Wednesday, a tasting at De Toren, and dinner at Grande Provence with a tasting beforehand on the Saturday. The day was still relatively young so we decided to go out to one of my favourite vineyards from the last trip - Stony Brook which is on the outskirts of Franschhoek.
We arrived and it was exactly the same - one of the most beautifully situated vineyards on the skirt of the huge mountains that surround the Franschhoek valley. This is a farm style tasting, with a relaxed tasting room with some outdoor tables, and as before, run by the lovely Joy (who owns the farm with her husband Nigel who was a doctor before getting the wine bug).
Here is Joy at the tasting room bar, where we pulled up a chair and got stuck in. Joy said she remembered us (we did do a large order last time), but I am sure she was just being unfailingly polite. She is truly one of the best people running tasting rooms - knowledgeable, friendly, not over-reaching at all, but really invested in the products. Some of the other tasting rooms go very much along the lines of "hire 'em young and pretty to keep people like SS happy". But of course the young pretty ones have no idea how many hectares are under vine, how many months in oak and which type etc etc. He does forgive them this usually however.
Here is the current Stony Brook offering - we tried all the reds and the sparkling.
They have rebranded their bottles also. Interestingly, Joy told us that they keep their labels simple as they do not have a huge output - because of this they do not put the vintage on the front label, but rather on the back. In this way they can re-use the labels year on year, and just update the cheaper back labels to save money. Apparently the recession has hit in that the price of the bottles has increased by over 50% in the last year, and similar for the labels. This simplified, non-specific year labels was an inspired idea I thought, which came from their son who is not taking over a lot of the running of the winery.
This is the view Joy has each morning as she walks from the house to the tasting room - you really couldn't complain?!
And the view over the vines towards the mountains. Stony Brook really does have a lovely situation - not as spectacular as some of the Stellenbosch wineries like Uva Mira, but I think I would prefer to live here really.
We bought two bottles of the Mouvedre and one of the Max since Joy had told us that they would like not be shipping these to the UK. She also had some great export boxes, cardboard with polystyrene inners to hold the bottles. I bought one box which held 3 bottles, and made a mental note to return to get more boxes when we worked out how many bottles we were going to end up buying that week. At only R25 for a three box, it was well worth it.
After the experience of bringing back 21 bottles from Argentina in not very well packed or padded bags (and having three break in the bag on the way home and saturate SS's bag) we were not taking the chance again. Joy asked where we were going for dinner that night - we did not have any plans at this stage and were thinking of cooking at home, but she recommended a new small restaurant called Ryan's Kitchen which had opened in one of the guest houses. The chef and his wife had approached the guest house, and arranged to use the breakfast room and kitchen for lunch and dinner (when it was otherwise unused) and so set up a small restaurant.
We stopped on the way back and checked the menu which looked good, so SS phoned and made a booking for that night at 8pm.
Back to the house and we relaxed reading for a while. I started reading one of K's books called "Quite Ugly One Night" by Christopher Brookmyre. A crime novel set in Scotland with lots of local dialect which went straight over my head. It rollicked along tho'. SS was still reading How the West Was Lost by Dambisa Moyo, which he started about 18 months ago. He was determined to finish it this holiday.
At 7:50pm we headed over to Ryan's and took our table. It is like everyone in the restaurant is at the chef table, since you can watch Ryan and his staff in the kitchen which is only a couple of metres away. Apart from the large extractor fan, the kitchen looks just like a normal home kitchen. Ryan's wife is front of house, and was capable if not completely relaxed and warm.
We had a bottle of Rupert & Rothschild Classique 2010 with our dinner, and perused the menu. I was still in the mode of ordering something different to SS so we get to see more of the menu, and so went for a starter that was not my first choice (I should hasten to add this is my quirk, not something that SS thinks is at all necessary).
First up came an amuse bouche, which we were asked to guess at the ingredients. SS got the ingredient right (watercress). It was a watercress espume with a mushroom soil on the top (he is quite Heston Blumenthal influenced). Beautiful presentation however.
Next up was starters. I had ordered the 62degree egg with ham, chicken mince and mint. Strange combination of flavours that did not really work together. The chicken mince was quite redundant, and the 62 degree egg (an egg poached at 62 degrees for 4 hours) was slightly gelatinous. Not the pick of the evening.
SS on the other hand did have the pick of the evening dish for his starter. This is pickled Malay style fish, with a seaweed canneloni filled with fish espume, and pickled vegetables. The canneloni in particular was fantastic - a roll made from seaweed and sugar, formed around a metal tube, cooked and filled with espume from the same malay fish sauce. Stunning.
On to first mains. SS had the seared tuna with Malay custard and vegetables. He said it was OK but not as good as the starter.
I had lamb with cherry chilli and mushrooms. This was incredibly rich but very good. The lamb was a saddle and so quite fatty however.
Next a palate cleanser - my nemesis again, the snozzcumber. Grrr. It was mixed with mint before being sorbeted however so I managed to choke it down. Why oh why does the cucumber exist as a foodstuff?
I was stuffed, but we had one more course to come - kingklip with crab sauce, asparagus, mint gel and vanilla mayonnaise. It was quite sweet and I was really not hungry, but I tried to do it justice. It was nice, but not outstanding again. The vanilla mayonnaise in particular was a sweet step too far, and the mint gel (under the green asparagus on the plate on the right) was just redundant.
We could not fit anything else in (and the menu pricing had been confusing so whilst we had thought we were on a "3 courses for Rx" we were not, so we just paid up and left. Not sure I would go back, but it was a pleasant meal and the environment was nice.
Off to bed - SS's dry cough was getting worse and his throat was very sore, but we were hoping by morning it might be better.
Luckily in the morning, the cough was no worse, but he was getting a little hot and sniffy. Not great for wine tasting. Still crossing fingers it would not turn into flu, we headed off at 9:45am over to Stellenbosch for a busy day.
Arriving at our first stop (L'Avenir) at 10:45am, we headed in for a tasting.
This was also a relaxed tasting room and we were the only people there. The lady in charge of the tasting was sweet but completely ignorant of the wines and the farms. Luckily we were not blown away - the only decent wine was the Grands Vin Pinotage which was very good at R250, so we got that (and as usual the tasting fee was waived therefore so this is always a good little extra discount).
Mr Strong liked it here however.
Next stop was Hartenberg for lunch. We had gone here last trip, and the wines are truly wonderful. We had notice people eating here last time, so decided the lunch was well worth trying.
However first we had time for a tasting, and headed happily indoors. It is a lovely tasting room - like sitting in the front room of someone's old farmhouse. This was also one of SS's favourite kind of tastings, overseen by a young pretty girl (19 in this case) who was studying at the wine institute. We also got some attention from the matriarch at Hartenberg who is always there. She matched the top end wines with smoked and pickled olives, which sounds like it shouldn't work, but it really did!
We finished up the tasting, knowing already we would be ordering the wines downstairs for delivery in the UK directly, and so headed out for our picnic lunch at the table under the vines. Since we had a big day ahead of us, we elected to take the wine that was included with the picnic with us rather than drink it there.
Here is the lovely picnic basket, all packed, and then all unpacked. So pretty with the little pansies tied on top.
There was salmon and leek quiches, new potatoes in mushroom vinaigrette, snoek pate, rustic pate, bread, pickled onions, beetroot and cumin relish, tomato salad, cheeses and olives, and chocolate brownies. It was quite filling (I ate the quiches due to SS's dislike of eggs, and SS ate the pate and bread).
We waddled downstairs and settled up for lunch. We also did a large order of wine, and bought a jar of smoked olives which are so wonderful - I have never had them before but they are just a taste sensation.
Back on the road, and round to De Toren where we had a vineyard tour and tasting booked in. This is an appointment only vineyard, and they only make two wines (which needless to say are expensive). The tour and tasting was R180 each. In the end the fee wasn't charged even tho' we didn't buy anything - they explained they only quote the fee to deter "tyre-kickers".
The farm itself is very pretty with nice views, and a neat little reception area.
We had a great tour with a winemaker called Liesl. She was a font of knowledge, and took us through their processes with real enthusiasm It was also great to really get some information on the techniques and farming methods. They have a lovely little tasting room as well with a great deck area overlooking the Stellenbosch valley. We were not hugely impressed by the Z or the Fusion V to be honest, but they were both very young. They were certainly not worth the premium to Hartenberg prices.
Since we were just around the corner from De Waal, we raced up there to see if we could sneak in a tasting. We got there 5 minutes before closing but the girl overseeing the very bland, clinical tasting room with her doofus boyfriend in tow was happy to let us (ie SS) have a tasting. I was a little wine-d out for one day at this point. Also, the main reason we had gone back (their Top of the Hill Pinotage) was sold out and we remembered their other wines were ... well, let's just say mass market rather than quality. SS necked about 12 reds in about 10 minutes, looked a little billious, and we headed out to the car again to go home.
His cold was getting worse so we decided after the large lunch to just get a simple dinner for home. In the Kruger my boerewors salad had gone down well, so we stopped at Pick n Pay on the way home and loaded up on wors, salad, garlic, and tuna. SS's nose was almost totally blocked by now (not great for wine tasting) so we stopped at Clicks on the main road so he could run in for Otrivine. Luckily they had it, so he was a marginally happier camper.
Home for dinner, which was very nice as I cooked it ( ;-) ), but SS was not getting much better. K had a small medicine box which had some lemsip equivalent in it, so I made him a large mug before bed. As he was halfway down it, he asked whether it had paracetamol in it. I had not thought to check the ingredients until now, so had a cursory read, only to find... aspirin was the main ingredient. EEEEKKK.
SS is quite badly allergic to aspirin. Which I knew. But hadn't checked. Definitely marked down in the girlfriend points.
So this led to an hour of stress, me frantically googling "what to do when you take aspirin and are allergic to it" and so on. The best thing apparently is Vitamin C, so we raided the fridge for juice and fruit, which he had to choke down altho' not hungry. The main problem is the allergic symptoms to aspirin mainly mirror what he had anyway - runny nose, blocked head, sore throat, slight fever. So not much we could do apart from me staring at him looking worried. He got bored of this scrutiny quite quickly so we went to bed, hoping he would not wake up covered in bruises in the morning... Not a great end to a lovely day.
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