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Category: Cape Winelands

Cape Town Update September 2020 – Spring!

Cape Town Update September 2020 – Spring!

Wow!  What a roller coaster of a year!    We came out of a tough 2019  (our drought scared people away from visiting Cape Town) and entered into 2020.   The year looked like it was off to a great start and we were almost fully booked for May & June.   Our forward  bookings were looking wonderful and I was ready to do a happy dance. South Africa Lock Down! In March our world started coming to an abrupt halt as…

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June 2020 – Cape Winelands – the foodie artisans are opening up & reinventing themselves

June 2020 – Cape Winelands – the foodie artisans are opening up & reinventing themselves

My touring van has been parked for three months during lock down and needed a good drive to get her battery going again!  So on a rainy Saturday we headed through to Franschhoek on what felt like a very long road trip after our lock down period. LOCK DOWN UPDATE: South Africa closed down for a strict lock down at the end of March 2020.   During this time restaurants were not allowed to trade at all and the sale of…

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Choose South Africa & Cape Town as your next travel destination!

Choose South Africa & Cape Town as your next travel destination!

All of us are trapped at home at the moment.  We are living in an unreal world where nothing seems normal.   And we are all longing for the same thing.  To escape  and to explore the world again.   We are longing for the wild outdoors, and even for the not so wild,  we want to be able to feel that we are in nature.   We simply want open spaces and sky.   I love the new hashtag people are using at…

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Spice Route Wine Estate- an artisan playground of endless fun!

Spice Route Wine Estate- an artisan playground of endless fun!

All I can say is WOW!  Charles Back is a marketing genius!  By buying the Seidelberg Estate (two farms down from Fairview) – he has created a hub of artisan fun on the Suid Agter Paarl Rd that is too hard to resist. The first step of the metamorphosis from Seidelberg to Spice Route was to bring the Spice Route wines across from Fairview and to turn the original tasting room into the Spice Route tasting centre.  The odd thing…

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Organic & Biodynamic – Avondale Vineyard Tour……doing things naturally!

Organic & Biodynamic – Avondale Vineyard Tour……doing things naturally!

A book could be written about the farming practices at Avondale!  Avondale is one of the oldest estates in the Paarl Valley.  In 1997 the John & Ginny Grieve (who own Vital Foods) purchased Avondale.  In 2000 tragedy struck when a devastating fire cleared the estate.  However, out of something harmful came an opportunity.   Their son – Johnathan Grieve – rose to the challenge and used the “clean slate” to start trying to restore the nutrients in the soil by…

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Artisanal Chocolate in the Cape – from Bean to Bar!

Artisanal Chocolate in the Cape – from Bean to Bar!

It took a visit to DV chocolates to realize that chocolate has become a commodity.  Chocolate is of course made from Cocoa Beans.  These beans come from many different regions and their flavour profile not only changes from region to region – but will also be affected each year by things such as climate – eg a dry year.  As such chocolate can have an estimated 600 different flavour compounds!! So how do the big chocolate guys make their chocolate…

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