Wednesday, March 16, 2016

End-of-summer fun at Muratie Harvest Festival, Stellenbosch

This is one we never like to miss. Held in the gardens at Muratie you can drink their wines accompanied by lovely simple but satisfying food and enjoy the live music with lots of your friends
A warm welcome from Michelle Stewart who markets Muratie’s wines
And an old (young!) friend, Robbie Wallace, who is studying wine at Elsenburg and helping out on Muratie for the day, brings us our lunch hamper. His parents, Nicky and Paul, make the Black Dog Malbec at Wallovale in Elgin among their many other activities in making and marketing wine
It was filled with ripe cheeses, grapes from the vineyard, fresh figs, wonderful sourdough bread and butter

Queuing for lunch. There were huge beef hamburgers with all the fixings and chips - John had one of those
You could have spring rolls and samoosas with a dipping sauce
Lots of fun for the children, grape stomping
And the adults. Very messy, sticky business
And a bit backbreaking, which is why we now have powered grape presses
In the historic cellar with those spider webs which are national monuments
The rustic tasting room
We had a lovely table under the trees
Michelle doing the rounds of the media and her guests, who buy the wine for their shops and restaurants.  She had magnums of the Laurens Campher red and white wines
Lunch
You could have a port wine and tonic cooler. They were very popular and one of the crew had to rush off to buy more tonic. Muratie has plenty of Port
And the music was cool dude great. Rather reminiscent of Cream and Eric Clapton
and thirsty work for the musos
Lynne's lunch was a smoked salmon and cream cheese open sandwich. Totally what she wanted
John’s burger and fries
We so enjoyed lunch with, first, a glass of the Lady Alice MCC Cap Classique and then the very satisfying Laurens Campher White blend of 46% Chenin Blanc, 27% Sauvignon Blanc, 19% Verdelho and 8% Viognier, which is great with food
The friendly faces behind the wine counter, Robbie Wallace, Marissa Groenewald and a friend
A lovely, lazy Saturday wine festival
Lots of Lady Alice MCC cooling
The band played on
Michelle and Jean-Mari Strauss with more wine, red this time
The superb view of Table Mountain from Muratie
Thank you all for a lovely relaxed festival with great wine and good, simple food
© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus


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