RTW Day 14: Wine Tasting

It seemed appropriate to end my trip in South Africa with a wine tour to see what all the fuss is about Capetonian wine and wine in general. Unfortunately my morning started abruptly with Alyssia shaking me awake to tell me my bus was here and waiting on me. After some groggy insistence on going back to sleep they convinced me this was a trip I would be stupid to miss, so I mustered up some strength from somewhere and dragged myself into the bus. To the bus drivers and later my own musement this was apparently a normal thing. "It's always the guys from Atlantic Point!"

 

First stop on the wine tour was a visit to a vineyard. It's winter there so there were no grapes or really much to the plants at all, but at least it wasn't hot.

 

Much more exciting was the manufacturing process itself, with fermentation tanks:

 

 

Storage barrels:

 

 

And other nice looking equipment and containers.

 

 

We visited a place where they make the wine called Goats Do Roam and true to the name there were goats everywhere:

 

 

Oh, and yes, we tasted wine allllll day.

 

 

And cheese, so good:

 

 

I'm by no means a wine expert now, but I did get a chance to learn a lot about the process and nuances of selecting, tasting and enjoying wine. They were right - I would have been very disappointed to miss this tour, hangover or no.

 

 

The people on the tour were great fun too. Our hiking buddy Yan was there, which was cool, and five guys from Australia who helped me prepare for my eventual trip to Melbourne. There was a couple from New Zealand as well, another boon to my trip. The rest of the group was rounded out with a newlywed couple from Chicago and two people from Finland (one originally from Cape Town). By the end of the bus ride we were drinking Brandy and Coke and having a great time:

 

 

At one of the hostels they were hosting another (free) wine tasting so I thought what the Hell, why not. I met another group there including a girl from Colombia, a guy from Israel and another American. This wine tasting wasn't nearly as exciting, and eventually I took a taxi back to the hostel to a group of very worried friends. Whoops.