Friday, March 13, 2015

Landskroon and Laborie at Paarl's Ommiberg Festival

We decided to give this festival another chance this year and are delighted to report that on the two farms we visited, it was a huge success and great fun. This year they advertised in the Cape Newspapers. We started at Landskroon on the Agter Paarl and then went round “the Pearl” Paarl Rock to Laborie in the centre of Paarl
Landskroon has lovely views across the winelands. In late summer the fields are brown and the dam is emptying
“Would you like to taste our Chenin or our Sauvignon Blancs?” For the price of R110 you received a wine glass and could taste all day at the farms involved. And you get to keep your glass
Busy in the cooler tasting room
You can even sit down and relax while tasting
Some wine to scoop
Live music and lots to eat outside on the porch
Huguette van der Merwe offering a tasting of the red wines
Some visitors intent on getting some grape stomping done
We went to Harvest restaurant at Laborie for lunch and start with a cool glass of their Blanc de Blanc MCC
Peter chooses beautifully cooked rump steak and crisp French fries with mixed vegetables
The girls go for the spicy calamari and chorizo. Just perfect for lunch
John has the starter portion
A “Hey, nice to see you again!” welcome from Zelda Oelofse-Cornthwaite, Laborie’s General Manager
Chilling over lunch
Lots of things for children to do on the lawn
And people enjoying the festival under the trees, and like us buying lots of wine in the tasting room. They had some superb specials on the day. All their MCC’s were reduced to R65 and we bought their splendid Chardonnay for R35 a bottle. So 4 cases went into our boot
Not part of the festival, but as we had to go to Franschhoek to collect something we ended up on the terrace of Rickety Bridge and with the help of our very good wine server, managed to taste a great selection of their wines
She was very helpful and answered a lot of questions. If you buy wine, they waive the tasting fee. A few bottles came home with our visitors
© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2015

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