{"id":573899093,"date":"2026-06-06T20:09:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T00:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573899093"},"modified":"2026-07-14T14:41:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T18:41:23","slug":"touring-more-of-the-western-cape-province","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2026\/06\/06\/touring-more-of-the-western-cape-province\/","title":{"rendered":"Touring more of the Western Cape province"},"content":{"rendered":"

We visited a 17th century winery today. This is part of the inner-workings of the famed Fairview Winery<\/a>, which began in 1693. Think on that for a while. <\/p>\n

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This, they tell us, is where the magic happens. Grape juice goes in here and sits and does some stuff and so on. <\/p>\n

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The mixing, the fermentation, the initial aging of wine. I’m not sure that I realized there were different stages to the aging of grape. <\/p>\n

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This is far more interesting, far more romantic. Those stainless steel tanks are manufactured somewhere. Probably by machines, maybe brought by aliens. But artisans made these barrels. Or, at least, they once did.<\/p>\n

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I assume there are still coopers in South Africa doing this work by hand. I follow a guy on social media who still does this in Europe. He’s almost the last of his kind there. What will we do for barrels when this craft disappears? Who will help the wine industry? Or the repurposed wine barrel industry? People buy these from wineries when they are exhausted, having given their last to years of grape juice, and they become planters, or centerpieces of homes and businesses. Oh, the stories they could tell of the grapes they have known. Good seasons, bad seasons, random people taking a photo and walking away, never pondering this process from acorn to tree to saw to cooper to Fairview. <\/p>\n

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And while this place has been at it longer than the United States has been a country. (Or South Africa, too, for that matter.) They are also known for their cheeses. They produce all of this right there on the farm. We saw some of the goats. <\/p>\n

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Some of those cheeses were outrageous. <\/p>\n

Wine labels are the most interesting thing. It’s an art, in that some are just there, some have a style that works for the viewer or drinker (or both!) and some just look like they are trying to hard. Here, I was amused that the catalog was broad enough to allow for all different sorts of artwork. This is just festive and evocative. It is a place you’ve never been, perhaps can never go, but suddenly you want to be there. <\/p>\n

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Classic color scheme and iconography, full of memories and long days and longer nights. <\/p>\n

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The standard issue label. Just stylized black text on a cream-white sticker. But the back tells the tale. Someone thought so highly of this batch they named it after Ma. <\/p>\n

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That also means that somewhere, in those rooms with the tanks and barrels, every so often someone has to give a sample a try and decide whether the new effort is also worthy of her name. <\/p>\n

We went over to Stellenbosch, which is a college town and also a wine town. Established at the end of the 17th century, it has a population of just under 80,000 people. It’s 30 miles from Cape Town, and the glimpses we saw make it feel like a universe unto itself. Charming as can be. This is the Moederkerk (Mother Church) in Stellenbosch. It is the second oldest congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, and it traces its roots back to the 1680s. <\/p>\n

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Here’s an accidental photo I took of my lovely bride. Wasn’t even aware of this thumb clumsiness until I started editing these photos. <\/p>\n

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And we stopped in one store in Stellenbosch and this gentleman was telling the story of his town, his tribe, and his life. He was also offering little sips of this 15-year-old brandy. Nice fellow, I liked most of the composition here. <\/p>\n

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And if you like this sort of thing, too bad. I don’t think they’re shipping to the U.S. at the moment. <\/p>\n

We had a lovely day. The sun was out. It was mild, but warm, but noticeably not summer. Winter has been trying to work its way into the region, and will get here soon enough, but this was a brilliant day to be outdoors, reveling in the sights and sounds, and thinking about those cheeses and wines. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We visited a 17th century winery today. This is part of the inner-workings of the famed Fairview Winery, which began in 1693. Think on that for a while. This, they tell us, is where the magic happens. Grape juice goes in here and sits and does some stuff and so on. The mixing, the fermentation, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,10,116,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573899093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-photo","category-south-africa","category-weekend"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573899093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573899093"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573899093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573899098,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573899093\/revisions\/573899098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573899093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573899093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573899093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}