.: The Elim Wine & Food Celebration

Early on Saturday morning, we picked up our friends and, trusting our GPS, headed off to the wilds near the southern tip of Africa, Cape Agulhas. We have learned, lately, not to trust the GPS implicitly, as this was another occasion when it got its directions horribly wrong and took us on a detour on very bumpy dirt roads. But, when we reached Black Oystercatcher Winery in Elim, we knew that the 3½ hour trip had been worth it. It was a real old fashioned country wine and food festival with the lovely wines of the area and masses of food stalls, music and other entertainment. Given the distance, we were amazed how many people from Cape Town had been attracted to the fiesta.

Winemakers, brand and sales managers representing the farms at the festival welcomed us

The grapes from Cederberg’s multi award winning wine brand, Ghost Corner, all come from the Elim area. Here are Pieter du Toit and Janine Steyn serving us a selection. The Semillon and the Sauvignon Blanc are very much to our taste, crisp, lean and elegant and full of the flavour of this rocky southernmost terroir in Africa.

We really like the Lomond wines, which we tasted. They have two very good blends, Lomond SSV (Sauvignon, Semillon with a dash of Viognier) and their crisp elegant Snowbush Sauvignon Semillon blend. They have three different Sauvignon Blancs, all delicious, all different. And there are lovely spicy Syrahs. They treated everyone to good smoked salmon and cream cheese crackers

Kobus Gerber pouring a taste for Lynne

Caroline Poulter van Schalkwyk who worked for Strandveld Vineyards for several years was the polished MC for the day . She is now with Steenberg as their Marketing Manager

Caroline with her husband Anthony, who is Marketing Manager at Ken Forrester Wines

Are they twins? We don’t know, but they look like it. The Giant Periwinkle wines are made at Zoetendal by Pierre and Allan Rabie

The Berrio being poured

David Trafford’s farm at Malgas produces the Sijnn wines. They are wines of huge quality and flavour. Sales & Marketing Manager Christine Andrews talks to a fan

Everyone tasting wine and food under one of the large marquees

Simon Harrison of @wine pours his shiraz

Jean Pierre Daneel with his mum Renée on the Jean Daneel stand. They are known for superb Chenin Blancs as well as a great wine, Signature Red, made from Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz. We bought one of our lunch dishes here, a superb jambon persille. We also had very good crisp calamari and chips