Ghosts, wine and grape stomping in Prince Albert

Posted by Sarah Duff on 14 March 2011

Dennehof‘s breakfasts are famed and it’s easy to see why. We took ours on a little deck in front of the house overlooking lush farmland and green mountains. Another morning started with Gay’s incredible yoghurt, this time with mint, honey and melon. We both had the Dennehof Breakfast Stack for our cooked breakfast – a pile of scrambled eggs, spinach and mushroom on toast with sweet chilli sauce and cheese. Yum.

With full tummies, we headed out into town and made a little mission visiting all the quaint shops – we had a long chat with Nicola Fellows, who owns Mix, a coffee shop that sells décor like printed cushions and fabric. She, like others we’ve spoken to, came to Prince Albert for its idyllic country lifestyle. She says she often gets frustrated by the limitations of living in such a small town, but then “˜there are moments of gorgeous stillness, and there are those blue skies’ and it makes it all worth it. Each person we chat to gives us another perspective on this town, which seems to be full of stories, characters and of course, like any small town, gossip.

We had read about SoetKaroo, a wine farm right in the middle of town on the main road. Popping into their tasting room, we met owner Susan Perold, who runs the farm with her husband, Herman. They have a hectare of land just behind their cottage on the main road where they grow four varietals to make around 3000 bottles of dessert wine a year. They bottle their own wine, which means that they are qualified to call themselves a wine estate. As such, SoetKaroo is the second smallest wine estate in the country.

They employ some seasonal workers to help them with the picking during harvest season, which is now until mid-March, but other than that, they run the show on their own. Behind the small tasting room is an equally small room where Susan does all the sorting and wine making. She had just started (fermenting) some red hanepoot grapes, which had been picked yesterday, to make Muscat d’Alexandrie. and we dipped our fingers into the vat to taste the sweet mixture. Susan explained the whole process of their wine making, after which we just had to buy some of these boutique wines. They’ve sold out of their other wines, so we just tasted the Muscat d’Alexandrie and Susan se Soetes, a wine made from all the dregs. Cold, sweet and grapey, Muscat d’Alexandrie Was a winner and we just had to buy some.

After a busy morning, we headed to African Relish for the start of our cooking course weekend. Jeremy Freemantle, the owner of the cooking school, met us and escorted us along with two UK expats – the other people in the weekend class, we drove out to Bergwater Vineyards for an afternoon of wine.

We had a beautiful lunch out on the vineyard’s terrace prepared by the kitchen at African Relish: olive, tomato and onion focaccia, and gorgeous salads: fresh fig, feta, red peppers, tomatoes and herbs; salami and greens, washed down with some crisp Bergwater Brut Rose. After lunch Bergwater’s young wine maker, Mariska gave us an indepth tour of the cellar, explaining in fascinating detail how it’s all done.

We watched the grapes been thrown into the sorting machine, saw them passing through intestine-like pipes and then watched the results spewing into a huge vat. My highlight was tasting unfermented and raw wines, which I’d never done before. A Sauvignon Blanc before fermentation tasted like delicious fruit juice, cold and crisp with just the slightest hint of alcohol. I could drink litres of it. A Cab Sauv in its unfermented state (the juice went into the vat just yesterday) was the most intense purple colour and tasted like the best grape juice you could imagine, but a “˜raw’ Pinotage – wine that had been fermented but not aged in oak – was tangy to say the least. We drank a lovely Shiraz extracted from its oak barrel before plopping our hot, sweaty feet into a vat of grapes for some stomping, which was great fun and felt like a spa treatment for our feet.

Then it was on to the serious business of tasting – and buying – the finished wines. Christie and I really had to restrain ourselves from buying a couple of cases. We loved the Sauvignon Blanc Reserve 2010, the Merlot Reserve 2005, and the Brut Rose. We limited ourselves to seven bottles each, which seemed rather prudent.

Back to Prince Albert, we checked in to our gorgeous Victorian cottage – the accommodation provided by African Relish for the weekend. Jeremy explained that he bought the two semi-detached cottages in a ramshackle state, and did them up himself. He obviously has a great eye – the cottage is bare wooden floored, with pared down colours (grey, beige and soft greens) with beautiful touches.

In the late afternoon heat, we took tea and rusks on the veranda of our cottage overlooking its little garden, feeling like we were totally getting into the whole country life thing.

African Relish had organized a ghost walk around the village with Alsa Tudhope. We met her outside the museum and she proceeded to take us around Prince Albert for a couple of hours, making the fascinating history of the town come alive. She entertained us with numerous ghost stories (nothing creepy – seems the ghosts of Prince Albert are pretty chilled and tend to do things like turn the TV on and move cushions on the veranda around), walking us to the houses where each ghost resides. It wasn’t just about ghosts though. Ailsa told us about how a local dominee lent Winston Churchill a hat to complete his disguise when he escaped from a Pretoria prison in the early 1900s, revealed that JM Coetzee lived in town for three years, and entertained us with tales of other colourful locals.

As dusk fell, we ended the walk and headed to African Relish for supper. We feasted on Weltevrede figs served with watermelon, mint, basil and ricotta, Christie had kudu steaks and I a delicious quinoa and chickpea casserole, and finished it off with more figs, served with homemade vanilla ice cream.

We’d been told about a big party happening at the Prickly Pear the night before by Rudolph, the Austrian barman. A local musician, Brian Finch, was launching his new DVD and the whole town was invited. We couldn’t not go. We arrived after our dinner to find the Pear buzzing. We started to feel like real locals when we realised when our new Prince Albert friends greeted us with hugs. In the course of the evening, we chatted to a farm boy about ghost stories and the incredible lure of the simple joys of the Karoo, met a farmer who was so excited about the possibility of us visiting his “˜typical Karoo farm’ and were ecstatitally greeted by the heavily bearded Brian Finch himself.

Count for the day:

Wine bought: 16 bottles
Wine drunk: Bergwater rose brut; Bergwater Sauvignon Blanc Reserve 2010
Farm produce bought: 1 jar of peach & chilli chutney, 1 jar of marmelade; 1 jar of jalapeno chilli chutney
New friends made: 5

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