Wine and Roses

Another visit to another vineyard, this time to De Grendel Farm, situated on the Tygerberg Hill.  As you gaze across the lake and the vineyards it's difficult to believe that you're just half an hour's drive from central Cape Town.  

 I think this must be the only winery where the view stretches as far as Table Mountain and includes glimpses of the city and seaboard.

 I've always wondered why you often see roses planted at the end of the rows of vines and research (thank you, google) reveals that the flowers are susceptible to the same types of infection as the vines and thus give warning of diseases which may affect the vines.  Another reason and the one I prefer, is that the combination of the roses and vines is an aesthetically pleasing and inviting sight.

Walk down the steps to smell the roses ...

... walk up the stairs to taste the wine

To wander through the delicate tracery of the hibernating vines is to marvel that seemingly dead branches conceal such hidden potential..

This is a farm which has been owned by the same family for three generations and which now forms part of a larger fynbos conservation area. Driving down the hill from the winery, past open fields, you are conscious of the effort being put into protecting the endangered "renosterveld"  - literally "rhinoceros vegetation".  There are several explanations for the name but the one I like suggests that  it derives from the Black Rhino which once roamed these areas.  The high fertility of the soil  makes the land vulnerable to cultivation, hence the "endangered" label.

I can enthusiastically  recommend the sauvignon blanc and rose wines produced by the estate as a memento, however fleeting, of time out from teeming city life.