This very country style wine festival took place last weekend on D'aria Farm and we went on Sunday. With your entrance ticket costing only R50 you received a good quality glass and 10 coupons, which enabled you to taste the wines at the festival. More coupons could be bought as needed. Shady marquees were put up all around the field holding all the Durbanville wine farms involved, who had many of their wines to taste and, between almost every wine farm, there was a food stand, often run by that farm. They did very interesting tastings in a tent throughout the day and we managed to get into two: One by Charles Hopkins, Cellarmaster of De Grendel, on the Unusual & Rare Varieties grown in the Durbanville area and one by Brandon Butler, winemaker at Nitida, on the white blends of the area. They had a lot of wine on sale at special festival prices to take home or drink in situ and the food on offer was also all reasonably priced. We had a lovely afternoon
Ollo Parker, owner of Altydgedacht estate, decide to live up to his name and make sure every car was correctly positioned
Stephen Jeffery's Black Plate Charcuterie stand was doing a roaring trade
An interesting variety of freshly baked breads
Ghenwa and Geza Steingaszner had a wonderful display of Lebanese delicacies
No explanation needed....
Heidi Cilliers, having moved from Villiera in Stellenbosch, showed us the wines of the new producer, Signal Gun
Jacus Marais talks to Lynne about Nitida's harvest
Loads of fun, and great exercise, tramping the new grapes
Delicious hamburger patties,
and lovely fresh breads at Altydgedacht
with Ollo Parker's youngest son showing us the Altydgedacht wines
Delicious steak rolls from Cassia, washed down with a glass of Nitida Calligraphy red blend
Then off to Charles Hopkins' tasting of Unusual & Rare Varieties
with wines poured for us by Roxy Laker of Errieda du Toit PR
Charles with his selection of Durbanville wines
A taste of the new fermenting must from the sauvignon blanc picked on all the 12 participating Durbanville farms
Despite cloudy weather and a little rain, there was a good turnout
Nitida owners Bernhard and Peta Veller's lovely daughter made sure we were properly seated to learn about the white blends....
ably assisted by winemaker Brandon Butler
© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014
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