An African safari honeymoon
An African safari honeymoon
A place where German brides, black ladies, wine and the Big 5 collide.
We arrive at Warwick Wine Estate with Mosquito Dave, Amstel Adams and his sister, Lara Black. "Big 5 game drive?" asks a friendly host, gesturing toward an avocado-green, Out of Africa Land Rover.
"Um, wine tasting please," Lara Black takes instant command. They're playing Michael Bublé which is really safe, very beige and boringly fitting for a formal wine lobby - but, still, it is extraordinary what folk choose to set tone.
This fine estate is, after all, home to Black Lady Syrah, Warwick's "tribute to the dark side" with its vampire-black-cloaked label more suited to drinking while listening to Black Sabbath. Or something beautifully morose like Leonard Cohen's A Thousand Kisses Deep.
The first time I visited Warwick, I was accompanied by the gracious MsBlack Tape, an LA-based burlesque dancer, and we were being paid by some filthy social rag to document owner Mike and Pip Ratcliffe's wedding. The second time round, I made use of their wonderful cellar to host a decadent dinner party.
Today, many years later, it's disheartingly unfamiliar, but I'm sure I'll warm to this facelift that is now wine safari slash Bruce Robertson-inspired gourmet-picnic. And it transpires that the safari is about the Big 5 grape varietals, their Bordeaux reds.
We are immediately escorted to a giant oak tree and forced to drink. It is dreadful. Dreadful in a way that makes you want to sing with joy, and leap and skip, and skinny dip in their inkpot of a dam, shouting gaily: "It's not over until the Black Lady sings!" But of course none of this really happens. We sit most civil, sampling Warwick wine under the tree.
"The estate is named after the Warwick regiment...Warwick Castle...blah, blah," spouts Angie, our wine host. "Ah, Warwickshire, that's where our family comes from," mumbles Amstel.
Mike joins us as we sample the Chardonnay 2008. "This wine reminds me of the banquet hall in Warwick Castle," chirps Amstel. "Musty." "Exactly!" Mike beams. I admonish him for playing Bublé in reception. "We were playing Goldfish earlier!" Okay, okay...
Angie brings out the emblem of Warwick Estate, a silver wedding cup of a buxom woman with a bell as a dress. She retells the German legend of the girl who loved a guy who was a tinsmith and how her father forbade their love so she ran off with him and then he was thrown into jail and the girl stopped eating chocolate and lost 50 kilos, so the father said, okay, the tinsmith could have her if he could make a cup from which two people could drink.
So he did. And winemaker Norma Ratcliffe was so taken by this story while shopping in some expensive antique shop in Canterbury Lane, or something like that, that she burst into tears and told the shop assistant: "I want 20 000 of these for my wine farm in Africa."
Well, not really, but the solid truth is that they cut their holiday short to pay for the damn thing, and now slushy romantic couples from Lisbon to Langa come to Warwick to drink from the cheaper pewter version.
We sip the Trilogy 2007. "Brash and masculine," says Ange. "Mmm... It's like a Seven Series BMW that's just had a valet," smirks Amstel.
Then we settle down to our gourmet picnic, and what a fantastic spread: warm crusty baguette, biltong and brandy paté, frikkadelle with tomato bredie, tabouli, poached chicken breasts with truffle mayo, death by chocolate brownies and, heavens, even makataan, watermelon and ginger preserve with our wonderful Chardonnay.
By God, life's a bloody picnic for sure.
