Day 45 - Friday July 9th, Stellenbosch
Today we made a booking for a tour of a winery out in wine country, east of Cape Town. We had some trouble missing the first train and had to wait an hour for the next one, but other than that, made it to the town of Stellenbosch uneventfully.
The winery was within walking distance of the train station and when we arrived, realized we'd be the only people on the tour. Our private VIP tour began, cleverly, with a wine tasting of five different wines (included in our $3.50 tour price). The tasting took place in their wine cellar, which is the only one in the Southern Hemisphere that is built into a mountain. We had an unfiltered Sauvignon Blanc, which was delicious, and even Brian, who doesn't really like white wine, enjoyed. We had a second white wine, Chenin Blanc, which was also very good. It was a little weird being on our little private tour, because we had to tell our guide whether or not we enjoyed the wine and make small talk about it, which was a little difficult given my limited vocabulary on the subject. We then moved to two reds, one of which was a pinotage, a grape that is a hybrid grown only in South Africa and developed just down the road at the University of Stellenbosch. We finished with a dessert wine and were now ready for the tour itself.
We saw all the distilling and cooling tanks as well as bottling, labeling, and packing machinery. We also got to see all the barrels that the wine IA aged in. It was a cool tour and sadly we had to run out to catch our train back to Cape Town so we could be on time for our overnight bus back to Johannesburg.
**edited to correct wine names -- the Droid auto-correct isn't always helpful
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