Marc Friederich, once Champion Sommelier of Switzerland, now has a smart eatery in Paarl, South Africa.

In most South African restaurants, you choose your own wine from a printed list or a chalk board. Some places have a wine waiter to help with pronunciation.

Yesterday, Marc told me about his transition from the tight world of European sommeliership to South Africa’s general incomprehension. Imagine telling one of our bankers about your profession (“People pay me to remember wine labels”).

Like all of the other highly trained European specialists hired to add value to South African 5-star restaurants, Marc soon branched out. He added cooking to the repertoire and put up his shingle. At Marc’s you can choose from the list or you can get the boss to tell you the story.

Is the number of sommeliers worldwide growing or falling?

Will the last sommelier in the cellar leave his notes?

Did you know that the original sommeliers were the ‘catering managers’ of the French army who transported food and bottles on packhorse to the scene of the battle?

Natasha Hughes, Ollie Smith, Kate Ennis, Annelize Stroebel (Wellington Wine Route) and me in the Mountainside vineyard

Wouldn’t you love to be paid to eat chocolate?
Or to lie on your back and watch the waves roll in?
I’m sure there’s a way to do it.
Some people get paid to drink wine. And to say anything they want to about it.
Take Ollie Smith. He gets to eat and drink as much as he likes and gets paid to talk about it on half a down regular British TV programmes. And just in case you might miss the TV when you’re driving, he also talks about what he’s eating and drinking on British radio.
We have singing and dancing Idols on TV. Ollie is the UK’s first wine drinking and talking Idol. He beat all of the other would-be Idols last year on BBC TV.
Then there’s Kate Ennis and Natasha Hughes. They love traveling everywhere and anywhere, eating and drinking only the best.
Last week, Kate, Natasha and Ollie were being driven all around the Western Cape by Thelma, who’s pretty and nice and a good driver. The 3 Brits then could concentrate on the job.
On Thursday, they went to Fairview where they were greeted by dozens of wines and even more dozens of cheeses, followed by a leisurely lunch. Then they came to Stormhoek where we went for a walk among the vines and orchards. We even met Poppie the Percheron, who posed for pictures.
Then we had to start working and I opened about a dozen bottles.
I didn’t ask them why they are called the Lifestyle Group.
But you might think it is obvious.

Every spring we witness the courtship dance of the South African human male, the rugby Currie Cup final. By 6pm, the game is over, the dominant males have been identified and dark begins to fall. At about the same time, around our house and in the adjacent Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard, the fireflies start their courtship show.
Both males and females flash their beacons and cavort around in the dark.
This happens every night, except in rain, for about 3 weeks, from about 7pm till pm when the electric lights stop flashing and the lovers can’t be seen.
Their party is a spectacular affair and without the stimulation of wine or other aid, they get a whole new generation going.
We await their return at the end of the next rugby season.
As usual, I tried to take a picture to illustrate this post.
However, the job difficulty exceeded my ability with the camera.
A firefly is about 1mm long and about .3mm wide. The lamp that emits the flashes under the abdomen is perhaps .2mm square. You can see the light for 10 or 20 metres but it doesn’t make any impact on the digital receptor, especially as the firefly doesn’t stay still for you to get some time exposure.

For the major part of Mandela’s stay on Robben Island, his cell, like all others, had no bed or mattress, just two mats. What appears to be a pillow are 5 blankets, which he had to keep like this when he was not asleep.
The mats provided were the best you could get. Note the South African Bureau of Standards stamp of approval (SABS).

There have been many requests to stay overnight in this all purpose room in the last 15 years. It served as bedoom, living room, bathroom and toilet, dining room and recreational space for one man for 18 years, though it is just 2 metres square (that’s 6ft 6in sq.).
This is where Nelson Mandela spent most of his time at Robben Island, sleeping, washing, eating, exercising and thinking. He is 6 ft 2in and couldn’t lie down without bent knees. The electric bulb burnt all night. He was taken out of the cell each day pre-dawn to join the other prisoners to break stones or make roads and returned to the lock up at 4 pm.
There are about a dozen cells on each side of this corridor in Block B, all principally the same. It’s where the most important political prisoners were kept.
Far from being in solitary, they were caged alongside each other. With care and discretion, they could communicate.
The idea was that they would do less damage if they were isolated from the rank and file political prisoners.
The diet was meagre and the beverages restricted to tea, coffee or water.
When Mandela was released, at the age of 72, he had never tasted dry wine. Within weeks, he was honoured and feted, virtually every day, and as a rule, next to his plate, he found the juice of the grape, fermented dry, red or white. He was not impressed.
He remains, today, the world’s most famous sweet wine lover.

Susan Kruger has ferried food, water, materials and human cargo to Robben Island for decades.

Susan Kruger was the amiable wife of apartheid Justice and Police minister Jimmy Kruger, a Welsh orphan sent to South Africa during World War 11 and brought up (and renamed) by Afrikaans adoptive parents.
The Kruger’s names would by now have been long forgotten but for two memorials;
Susan’s boat and the death of Steve Biko, Jimmy’s personal nemesis.
Steve Biko, the leader of the Black Consciousness movement, was murdered by police while in custody and the erstwhile Welsh waif replied to a question in Parliament with “…his death leaves me cold”, cementing his place in South African history for generations to come.
Fortunately, many of the other political targets of Jimmy Kruger’s Police and Justice system survived to play out their jail terms on Robben Island. To get there, they had to be transported across the often stormy waters of Table Bay.
In 1979, Jimmy named a new harbour workboat after his wife and in 1980, this became a prison boat, carrying political prisoners and warders backwards and forwards between the island prison and Cape Town.
When Mandela was moved from Robben Island to Pollsmor Prison in 1982, Susan Kruger carried him in chains and leg irons in her damp belly to the mainland.
In over 10 years, several thousand dissidents made the trip to the Island, manacled in Mrs Kruger’s hold.
With the change of government in 1994, the prison was closed. However, Susan Kruger has continued to carry people to and from the island. Many of these are ex-residents of the prison. But today, as administrative staff and tourist guides, they now ride on the ferry’s upper decks.

A year ago, this black wattle was just a metre high and virtually invisible among the native plants. It grows fast and reproduces freely and would, if left unchecked, replace all of the indigenous flora.

It is not generally known that there are more illegal Australians in the Western Cape than law-breaking South Africans. My wife and I are two of the interlopers. We try and justify our presence by removing thousands of Australians every year. When we arrived in this elevated valley above Wellington, we were greeted by a grey-green landscape of mostly protean renosterveld, patched here and there with the seaweed-green of tall bushes.
When we walked though the native flora, we encountered hakea sericea, originally imported to tame the Western Cape sand dunes, acacia saligna and acacia mearnsii, known as Port Jackson wattle and black wattle, respectively, and several different eucapyptus, broadly known as gum trees, which unwelcome invaders over much of the temperate zones of the whole planet.
The populations weren’t yet critical, but we found that the carpeted hillsides of protea bushes were peppered with baby wattle, hakea and gum trees.
It became clear that our fellow Australians would soon obliterate the slow-growing local flora. So we confess that we have become involved in planticide.
And now we even support the Springboks against the Wallabies.

This vine is painted red to show that it is one of the Semillon vines in our old block
that has bunches of red grapes. In winter, without leaves or grapes the red ones look the same as the green ones. We have taken the prunings of the red grape Semillon vines to grow as cuttings to make a new vineyard, exclusively red.

Red wine is made from grapes with skins that appear to be black. White wine is usually made from grapes with green skins.
A third category is those vines that have red skinned bunches, not as deeply coloured as Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot. One is these is Pinot Grigio. As the juice is white, we normally make white wine from these grapes.
Semillon can act as if it is colour blind and some vines have white skins and others red.
It is rare to see this today as Semillon cuttings for the propagation of new vineyards have been exclusively taken from vines with white skins. Winemakers prefer to work with the white skins. The red skins have to be handled with care not to get rose wine.
We have a block of 1048 Semillon vines planted in 1972. Of these 153 have red skinned grapes every year. We pick the whole block at the same time and the red grapes are crushed with the white ones.
As the skins of these grapes play no role in the winemaking, we get white wine which we barrel ferment, every year.
The red skinned grapes make no more than 100 litres, too little to fill a barrel. So we’re going to make a new small vineyard – all red.

There’s a road to nowhere in the Cape mountains where the dusty track winds this way and that, diminishing in width as it goes. Finally, in front of a set of horse stables, it peters out.
Few cars are seen on this Boven Vallei (upper valley) road, usually abbreviated to the Bovlei, north east of Wellington. They bring trade and business to the valley, mostly suppliers of wine equipment and horse feed.
After heavy rain and we’ve had a lot this winter, finding your way around the holes makes for a slow trip.
There are a few wine lovers who make the effort, searching for the holy grail of Nabygelegen (near enough), Doolhof (labryrinth), De Companie (the company) and Stormhoek.
Many turn back without finding their destination, believing they must have lost their way somewhere.

Graham and I have been to about 40 restuarants over the last 3 weeks and I am very proud to annouce that we have issued invoice 1 and 4 in Cape Town to one retail outlet and one restuarant. The two most honourable recipients of Stormhoek wine were Observatory Bottle Store in Lower Main Road, Observatory and Gardners Cottage in Newlands. Support these early adopters, they are sure to give you great service and in the case of Gardners Cottage, some great food too to go with our great wine.

Shane

Cape Town’s top wine bar, The Nose, is setting records with Stormhoek Pinot Grigio.
From left to right, Shane Wilson, blogger and Stormhoek man on the ground, Mynhardt Joubert, Nose’s manager and Lee Ann Wicomb, chief record setter

“Hi, my name is Shane and I am…” [I know what you are thinking…wine blog – the opening phrase of a well known support group]
but, actually “I am…..an addict.” I am addicted to Stormhoek. So much so that I have joined the sales team.

How? I started my own blog about 2 years ago. It went nowhere (mainly because my posts were less than ordinary).
I came across www.changethis.com last year and found
“How to be Creative” written by none other than our
lad Hugh. Having just attended an amazing Edward de Bono with Nicola Tyler this would have
been an appropriate Google – +”how to” +”creative”

From there, “How to be Creative” led me to gapingvoid.com and that led me to English Cut and
back the global microbrand thingy and from that, here,
into Stormhoek.

I have obsessed about owning a wine farm since I was a teenager. So naturally the Stormhoek blog was a starting point and I voraciously consumed
the early conversations the blog had to offer. But I still wanted to know more…

In March 2006, I emailed Graham [Knox] to inquire about the availability of Stormhoek in Cape Town to be met only with an email that there was
a distributor in Gauteng, that a local [Cape Town] one was being sought and that I would be contacted shortly.

And then, in April 2006, I reached a personal crossroads and made the decision to follow a dream and go independent from my corporate
employer – known only as my “ball and chain” – to pursue my other business interests. Part of this thought process
resulted in another email to Graham along the lines of “I am going independent and if you still don’t have anyone to sell the wine in Cape Town,
I will do it” with the disclaimer that I “have some wine certification” from
the early 90’s (not mentioned then) and “have passion”, correction, have “lots of passion”. Exaggeration will get you everywhere, but I still
had no idea what it entailed. My last sales experience was in my early 20’s as a waiter at a national steak house chain.

What I do believe is that real, authentic, face-to-face conversation is what gets a thing sold and sometimes (more rarely) the thing
sells itself. Your passion, knowledge, product and authenticity simply augment the process. What really keeps it sold falls back on
keeping the relationship alive and vital through follow up, consistency, availability (you and your product) and caring (for your client
and product). Love what you sell, baby, and it will love you back. And so here I am – Storm-hoeked…line and sinker.

Graham and I went on the road on Thursday (7/7/06). It was great!!! I learnt so much! We visited 8 restaurants, mostly in the
southern suburbs of Cape Town and the reception was amazing. It is great to have such a good product and a market begging for something out of
the ordinary.

As Hugh so delicately puts it, “The market for something to believe in is infinite”. Drop us an email and
we’ll pop in…at your convenience of course.