Buitenverwachting Winery tasting room review
Buitenverwachting Winery tasting room review
Buitenverwachting – “beyond expectation” in Dutch – is suitably eponymous, based on this visit. There’s a pervading sense of hospitality here with a host of visitor facilities, over and above a mere tasting room and working cellar (or bottling plant). One could linger here for a day with two top-line restaurants, vast lawns for picnicking and nothing short of superlative tasting room service. Buitenverwachting is wheelchair friendly and nippers can amuse themselves on the lawns while mom and dad head for the good stuff.
No tasting fee is charged and Kim and Tanya at the pouring desk admit to the farm preferring intimate one-on-ones with customers rather than large groups. Ample seating within the tasting venue encourages you to relax and contemplate a range of wines as close to Old World elegance as anything the region produces.
The property’s greatest asset is in stalwart cellarmaster Hermann Kirschbaum. A technical question on Buiten’s Riesling produces the winemaking legend in the flesh. What follows is an unsolicited discourse on Kirschbaum’s philosophy about life and winemaking over several glasses of exceptional wine (note: we had successfully arrived incognito).
Make tasting their Gewürztraminer 2005 (R60 ex-cellar) a priority – Kirschbaum is perplexed as to why it hasn’t yet sold out. The sad consequence is that the vineyard is being uprooted and this very good local example of the variety will soon be no more.
The range of wines available for tasting offers red wine drinkers more scope for choice than at neighbour Klein Constantia. Sample the flagship Bordeaux-style red blend Christine (4 Stars in WINE magazine, April 2008) to accurately gauge what this producer is all about: understated class. With no prompting we’re talked through an ad hoc vertical of Christine from 2002 to 2004. The wine sells ex-cellar for R200 a bottle.
Each wine is served in its appropriate glass. Flute for the Brut, a larger receptacle for reds and so on. Branded ISO glasses can be purchased as souvenirs at R10 each along with branded corkscrews, homespun preserves and a discreetly displayed selection of jewellery which does seem somewhat out of place.
Mrs Kirschbaum offers bread and soup evenings with Riesling and it isn’t long before I’ve cracked the nod. On leaving, I reveal to Kirschbaum, Tanya and Kim the real nature of my visit, and they’re surprised yet quietly smug. They’ve bagged this one. They know they have. I leave confident that this warmth and sincerity is very much par for the course at Buitenverwachting.
OPEN: Mon-Fri 09h00 -17h00,
Sat 09h00-13h00
SERVICE: 9/10 – bright, pleasant
and wine savvy.
AMBIENCE: 8/10 – homely,
historic Constantia.
VALUE: 7/10 – try them all; opt for
mixed cases of one or two bottles of
each wine.
QUALITY: 9/10 – not for the novice;
overall, these are serious wines.
