.: 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