Stunned at Stellenbosch Berg

And now... back to the game...

The final two farms I visited on Wednesday was Kleine Zalze and Blaauwklippen in the Stellenbosch Berg area. I visited these because I finished my original wine route early and didn't want to waste a second of time that could be spent wine tasting.

Kleine Zalze has a beautiful entrance and restaurant alongside it's unique and interesting tasting room - perfect for taking a group of good friends (or even family) sitting back with a few bottles of wine, chatting and relaxing your day away. This also happens to be the only farm I've every found a straight varietal Gamay Noir. It has a long list of wines, good, friendly service and very well-priced wine - an almost-perfect place to take your student-friends. I tasted both of the Sauv Blancs, the first was filled with fresh granny smith apples, whereas the Family Reserve was more complex with hints of fig leaf and green pepper - great for summer, especially if you enjoy a dry, crisp white wine. The Bush Vine Chenin Blanc which gave me the image of women in a full-bodied swimming costumes, wearing over-sized sunglasses and a wide-brim hat on a lounge-chair by the pool sipping on a glass. It had delicious notes of citrus and pine-apple. The wooded chenin is a perfect every-day drinking wine for summer time which still retained its pineapple nose, but had added flavours of paw-paw, with that slight hint of toastiness and a lovely deep straw colour that immediately gives it away that it's wooded. This wine is really my style of white wines that I do so love. They also have both an unwooded and wooded Chardonnay. The unwooded Chardonnay was quite interesting with gooseberry, peach skin, honey and a sharp note of lanolin. The wooded version had an added note of butterscotch (which was fantastic) and an almond finish that lingered on the palate. From there, I went onto the Gamay Noir Rose filled with ripe cherries, strawberries and raspberries, a great picnic wine at a great price. The Gamay Noir straight varietal retained the fruitness of the Rose with some added notes of mushrooms, a slight gamminess (like meat when it gets a bit clammy).

In the reds, I really enjoyed the Merlot here as well, with milk chocolate and dark cherries jumping up the glass - definitely my style of Merlot, and just what I look for when I want an easy-drinking smooth red wine. The Celler Pinotage smelled strongly of fresh banana with a spicy score of black pepper and cloves - an interesting pinotage and well worth the price tag. The Cab Sauv was a fruity version of what Cabs can offer with all the red berries really coming out in the wine - I'd love to taste a blend of this with the Merlot, as I think the softness of this Cab will make an extraordinary addition. The final wine I had here was another odd shiraz (the Family Reserve Shiraz) which had peculiar notes of Turkish Delight and Strawberries, but the palate had the added blackberries with vanilla and white pepper - very enjoyable. Another thing to remember is that this farm closes at 6, which is about an hour after everyone else closes down (I should've made it my last stop).

The final farm I visited on Wednesday was Blaauklippen. For the second time I arrived within minutes of their closing time, but they were nice enough to let me taste a handful of their wines. I began with the White Zinfandel (which is a new wine style for them, if I'm not mistaken) which was filled with peach, apricot and lemon grass, really delicious and quite different and a great rose-style wine. The next wine I had was the Zinfandel, in which I picked up lots of dried fruits - raisons, prunes, and a dark fruit cake (almost coffee/chocolate/treacle to it). I honestly think Zinfandel is the good American varietal, and I've enjoyed them every time I've tasted them. The Cabriolet is the blend I tried out here which is mostly Cab Franc and Cab Sauv with tiny amounts of Malbec and Merlot. I picked up tobacco and black currant predominently, and a bit of a methonal (maybe eucalyptus, lavender or mint) to it. I will definitely revisit this farm in one of my trips and get the full list of tasting. I really wish I made it at the right time last year (between October and November) when they had a sweet Zinfandel on offer, a style which is not likely to be repeated in the near future (from what I was told). Pity, because with all the scents and flavours I picked up from the Zinfandel, it would've made an excellent sweet wine or even port. A great range of wines here as well, and just across the road from Kleine Zalze makes this another great spot to go wine tasting, plus they have an interesting smell display set up for you to compare certain smells with certain wines - perfect for the novice wine taster (hey, I found it interesting as well).

Well, I feel releaved after writing about Wednesday's tasting. Now I need to get through the 6 farms I went to yesterday, and tomorrow will be another whole new set of farms to go to. Busy, busy, busy...

Val.