Stellenbosch

The second day began with a nice car ride at 9 am out to Stellenbosch, which is about a 40-minute drive outside of Cape Town. It’s the wine lands. Jaime’s friend did Semester at Sea last semester and told us to stay at this place called The Stumble Inn (great name right?!) and you can also do a wine tour through them and we ended up spending the night there also because it was like a combo pack to do a wine tour with them and then spend a night there. OH! I went with Katie, Tess, Jaime and Megan. Our wine tour started bright and early at 10:30 am and went until 5 pm. Long day! It was a big group of us and we were in 3 vans. There was a bunch of people from England and then people from Germany. In my van it was Katie, Jaime, Me and a German couple Adrian and I forget the girl’s name… it was a hard name to remember/pronounce. Our driver’s name was Artie and he was AWESOME! We got to the first winery and it was called Simonsig. We went to a wine cellar and got to see all the wine barrels and that was cool. We actually got to see them like making the wine and it being put into the barrells and all and saw the owner's son who like runs it now. Then we had our tasting and we learned how to be REAL wine tasters. It goes like this... you swirl, tilt the glass til the wine is about an inch from the top, smell it, take a sip, after you have the wine in your mouth you suck in a little air, swish it around your mouth so it covers all your taste buds and then you either swallow it or spit it out. It started with a white sparkling wine, and then we had a choice of 3 more wines. After that winery we went to Fairview…where I got a sticker that said.. OFFICIAL TESTER. There we got 5 more glasses and CHEESE! Now, for those who do not know me, I LOVE cheese. Kara (my sister) says I’m going to turn into a cheese quesadilla one day because i just love cheese so much and anything to do with cheese. So anyway… we had some wine there. And THE BEST cheese ever. My favorite one was the garlic and herb goat cheese. Omg amazing!!! I had like 5 cubes of it I just couldn’t stop eating it. After that we went to lunch and then to ANOTHER winery. This one was BEAUTIFUL… it just had a beautiful view of the mountains and vineyards (the Franscchhoek vineyards to be exact… I have the sheets next to me that’s how I remember all the names). This one was called Dieu Donne Vineyards and was beautiful. Here I met one of the guys in the other vans who is from Jamaica but lives in New Jersey. How crazy!! We took a lot of photos here because it was beautiful. After that vineyard… we went to our last one which I actually don’t have a sheet for and don’t know the name of. But this one was really pretty too. After this, we just went back to the Stumble Inn and took a power nap before exploring the nightlife of Stellenbosch.
Until next time!