South Africa's Wonderful Winelands

When my travel agent suggested my wife and I spend a couple days in the Winelands area of South Africa I wasn't entirely sure. I mean, I Iove good wine. But we only had eight nights to spend in the country, and I wasn't sold on this as the best use of our time.

But my feeling about these things is that it's usually best to trust your travel advisors, and our Goway Travel agent is a native of South Africa. I also looked briefly at some photos on line. And that pretty much did it.

We had two nights in the village of Franschhoek, about an hour north of Cape Town. Both nights were at a wonderful hotel/resort called the Franschhoek Country House and Villas, with spectacular food and comfortable, spacious rooms. The Winelands are a stunning part of South Africa, with rolling hills dotted with pale green vines in spring (we visited last month, which was early spring in the southern hemisphere) and spiky, jagged mountains all around that I hadn't expected. It's like someone took the lush vines of the Napa Valley and surrounded them with the towering, craggy peaks of Palm Springs.

Franschhoek Country House and Villas feels like a south of France/Mediterranean resort, with and features several pretty fountains and two swimming pools; one cold and one heated.

Our villa room was immense and nicely decorated, with a large patio and a bathroom big enough to hold a small convention. We had a large living room with a coffee-maker, mini-fridge, fireplace, sofa and chairs, a small table. There was also a large bedroom with a small table and a second balcony.

Our room had terra cotta floors, flowery paintings and exposed wooden beams/supports for an upscale/country feel.

I didn't know what to expect at the on-site restaurant, called Monneaux. But I was blown away by a meal as good as any I've had in the world. The ingredients were interesting, the food divine and the presentation exquisite.

The top price I spotted on the menu for a main course was lamb, and it was listed at just over $19 CAD.

Head chef Calvin Metior worked for five years in London and loves the cuisine in Copenhagen.

We started with an exquisite serving of salt-baked celeriac, which was soft and tender and served with wild, pickled garlic.

"I really enjoy working with vegetables," Metior told me. "We get them fresh from just down the road; giant carrots and other great produce."

Metior says he wants to bring European touches to the menu and not rely on meat and game like some South African restaurants seem to do.

"The prep time on some of these is quite serious," he says with a grin.

The pickled beet root is succulent with citrus honey, candied pecans and goat's cheese

We later sample an amazing bonito tartare with cured sesame lime dressing that's covered with a blanket of ginger and seaweed. Metior gives it a nice wasabi kick, too.

Metior makes his own guanciale and pancetta and breakfast sausage. His pork shoulder is brined for 24 hours, cooked sous vide for 12 more and then finished in a flaming hot pan. It is to die for; smoky and sweet and tender.

His beef short rib is smoked in hay for two hours and melts before it even hits your fork.

Metior and his team served us matching wines for each of our courses. There was a lovely sparkling wine to start, a crisp rose, a deeply-flavoured Pinotage and a couple of exceptional, local dessert wines.

For dessert we sampled a raspberry dish with layers of meringue and white chocolate; a frenzy of pink and red deliciousness.

For breakfast the next day we tried Metior's "breakfast in bread," which featured chorizo, pork sausage, onions, peppers, tomato and cheddar. Yum. If you're not that into breakfast meat, you can try local fruits, croissants, yogurt, Eggs Benedict or Belgian waffles.

The Franschhoek Country House is on the outskirts of the town, but there's a coffee shop and grill next door and several wineries within walking distance. The hotel has a free shuttle that takes you into town in just a minute or two, and you can rent bikes from the hotel if you like. We decided to get our steps in and did a roughly 15-minute walk into the village for lunch and shopping.

The town of Franschhoek (it means "French hook") runs for several blocks and features handsome hotels, art galleries and shops selling South African and French-made products.

There's a monument to the French Huguenot settlers (Protestants who weren't welcome in Catholic France) who came here in the 1600's at one end of the village, and the town is dotted with names such as Villefranche and Place Vendome. You'll find tri-colour French flags all about.

I found tons of cool items in the Tap and Cork shop; local gins, candles, African spices, olive oils, Cape Gooseberry Vinegar and lots more. Toca Madera County is a fine antique shop/clothing store/little bit of everything shop that was playing some vintage 1950's rock and roll when I wandered in, while Monzart is a fine gallery with lovely, contemporary art.

My wife and I wandered into Good Food and Co. for lunch one day. We ate on the sunny patio out front under white umbrellas and enjoyed a good fried chicken sandwich with fries and cole slaw, as well as a very good Cape Malay curry with papadum and rice, served with salsa, chutney and sliced bananas.

They had a keyboard player and singer of a certain age who was singing soft tunes on the porch for a nice, relaxed ambience.

The next day we had a very good pizza and a fine salad with mandarin oranges and cashews at Col Cacchio. There's a shady area with picnic tables out front and a small playground for kids, which makes this a perfect family dining spot.

We didn't stop, but a place called the Village Tart was offering beautiful lemon meringue cake, along with a soup of the day, avocado and feta cheese on toast, and other items.

One fun way to experience wine country in the Franschhoek area is to take the open-air wine tram, which takes you up and down the valley and stops at a variety of wineries. It costs about 240 Rand (roughly $22 CAD), but you pay for your wine at each stop.

Our hotel suggested we instead try a private tour, which cost us about $60 CAD each and took us to up to four wineries and included samples. So, that's what we did.

As it turned out, we only had time for three wineries, but we had large samples at each (at least six at each winery and I think eight or nine at the first one) and had a driver who talked about the area and the wines at length. I think we also got to stop at more interesting wineries and had far more of a personal experience than folks would get on the tram.

Admittedly, it was a Monday in spring and not a summer weekend, but we saw four other visitors at the first winery we went to and not a soul at the other two. At all three places we sat outside in a shady spot and sampled large amounts of wine while chatting up experienced winery workers. It was nothing like the wine experiences I've had in California, where you sometimes have to elbow your way to the bar and are lucky to get five or ten words out of the winery folks.

Our first stop was Moreson Wine Farm, which makes exceptional sparkling wine and some very nice whites and reds. We sat a picnic table with four other visitors and sampled at least eight or ten varieties while chatting with one of the senior staff, Herman Koegelenberg.

It's cooler here than in nearby Stellenbosch or Paarl, so sparkling wines do extremely well. They also make several styles of Chardonnay, ranging from buttery and round to lean and crisp.

I also loved their Fudge Straw dessert wine, named after a late Jack Russell terrier named Fudge, who Koegelenberg called "a feisty little bugger."

Some winery folks can be a little on the uppity side. Not Koegelenberg. When he was talking about how yeast interacts with the wine, he described at as hungry yeast critters "farting and pooping and doing their thing with the sugars."

I stifled a laugh, and Koegelenberg smiled.

"Well," he said. "That's basically what it is."

Our next stop was the Anthonij Rupert Wine Estate a huge estate that I was told reaches some 700 hectares and includes vineyards, an olive grove, a vintage automobile showcase, a rose garden and a beautiful home with posh furnishings and a lovely outdoor patio. We sat outside on the patio and tasted a half-dozen wines, gazing out at a lawn that was roughly the size of several football fields, and with a view of the Franschhoek mountains all around. And there wasn't another tourist in sight.

The Cabernet Franc was rich and delicious, with a solid nod towards the great blends of Bordeaux. Their Sauvignon Blanc was fruity and crisp at the same time and felt like something halfway between a California Sauv Blanc and one from New Zealand.

We didn't have much time to explore the estate, but they gave us a 10-minute drive around the property, which was fun. It looks like the sort of place one could spend an entire afternoon. Which wouldn't be hard if they'd let you crash in one of the bedrooms of the estate after a generous wine tasting.

Our final winery was a small place called Lynx Wine Estate. They used to grow table grapes but found they were being undercut by low prices, so they switched to making wine a couple decades back.

It's a very low-key, quiet place overlooking a valley lined with pretty hills. There were no other visitors when we were there, and the only thing we heard over the space of an hour was the distant whir of a power mower and a flock of birds out in the vineyards.

The Blanc de Noir is only about $7.50 Canadian and goes down very easy. The resident wine expert, Jason, smiled and called it a "very dangerous wine."

I also enjoyed the fruity, floral Viognier and the slightly spicy Shiraz, which we purchased to have back in Toronto for a back yard barbeque next summer.

On our last night we had dinner at ROCA Restaurant, located high on a hotel near our hotel. The food was good, the wine excellent and the setting extraordinary.

The restaurant has a lovely lawn area with sweeping views of the valley that are quite remarkable. On top of that, we were treated to a sensational sunset.

Great wines. Fabulous food. And a lovely resort. If you're headed to South Africa and you enjoy wine, this is a place you don't want to miss.

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