With our Lemoenfontein exhibition opening tomorrow evening at the Pendock Wine Gallery @ Taj at 6pm, I thought about why we bought our piece of Swartland heaven back in 2007, before the Swartland Revolution, before the Independents, before Adi Badenhorst bought Kalmoesfontein even. Before Chinese was the lingua franca in Platteland dorpies. When Mr. Wu still ran the laundry and Anton Espost was not yet ripped off by Franschhoek designers and still owned a farm on the Riebeek Mountain. Here is Anton’s map of the Winelands for orientation.
There are many reasons for buying property in the Swartland. More stylish moffies than you find in Greyton. Falling in love with Eben Sadie is the usual one for wine writers while Bar Bar Blacksheep and their baked sheep hearts caught more foodies than Plooysburg flypaper in those heady days before Kokkedoor. Riebeek-Kasteel looked like the set of PG du Plessis’ Koöperasie Stories when they were still funny while Barry’s Beef & Barrel (then owned by Robert) presented the cast of Finding Nemo on their menus. When you had to pasop for the bad tempered Malmesbury traffic cop with an Oprah afro and an ambush in the one hour parking zone.
You had to love a town where KFC runs out of birds (with more chicken farms than farm dams in the Swartland) yet remained open, selling coleslaw and cream soda. Or the annual Christmas party at the Co-op where farmers brought their own brandy (Coke being complementary). Now they’ll have to eat with chop sticks.
We started out on the Paardeberg on the wrong (i.e. Paarl) side. Callie Louw was winemaker at Vondeling, a farm owned by a London rally driver with nickname “chocolate finger.” Callie has since seen the light and moved – via Tulbagh – to Porseleinberg where he “braiis” the meanest leeks this side of Cardiff. I’d spent the morning judging for the Absa Top Ten Pinotage Competition in Devon Valley in those happy days before I was Zille’d (fired) for arguing that coffee Pinotage was a valid (and popular) style. Heartily sick of green bananas and nail varnish, Callie introduced me to Willie de Waal who has a more impressive scar than the Red Baron and Jan Eksteen, who wore bigger sunglasses than Elizabeth Taylor.
If this was an article in The World of Fine Wine magazine, this is where I’d launch into boring descriptions of the whiffs of cassia and blasts of capsicum in the wines we tasted that day, but try buying either in Riebeek Wes and you’ll come short. And I’m not that appalling spoofer Tim J’aimes anyway. Heck, when Swartland celebrated 350 years of Cape Wine in 2009, the main speaker raised a toast to the man who made it all possible, Jan van Niekerk, and I was the only one who thought it skreeusnaaks.
Price pulled us to the northern end of the Paardeberg, or Partyberg, as Pieter Euvrard calls it. Or Penisberg as Media24 now refer to it. And when I found out that Pieter is related to Esme, of Hospitaaltyd fame on the Springbok Radio of my schooldays in Boksburg, the koël was deur die kerk as the troopies in Katima Mulilo used to say as they listed to Auntie Esme, somewhere on the border.
As Gavin Rajah will confirm, Franschhoek is the Foschini of SA wine fashion and Stellenbosch is Stuttafords. In fact the Stuttaford family used to own the Helderberg, so there you go. Which makes the Paardeberg, Mr. Price, the discount chain where everyone buys their clothes/grapes and then lies about it.
We bought Lemoenfontein in the Siebritskloof from Tina and Barry Schreiber in a rainstorm back in 2007 and soon had a bonus of Cornelia and Adi Badenhorst as neighbours when they bought Kalmoesfontein farm from Pierre (no relation to Callie) Louw. Wynkenner Emile Joubert explains the name Siebritskloof dates back to the Anglo-Boer War when some scouts from Boer HQ in Gouda thought they’d seen Tommies on Orangerie and reported they’d “seen Brits.” Emile is a reliable authority, as Joubertskloof is another valley in the mountain.
As I tell my Belgian friends, it can’t be such a bad spot if Stef Bos got married in a clump of trees on Kalmoesfontein, although standards are definitely slipping when one of Adi’s first parties was held to demolish his binnebraai (indoor “braii”). We treasure ours. The bush vines on Lemoenfontein were planted in 1969, the year of Woodstock and we’ve made wine every vintage since 2008. We’ve even bottled the stuff and for a label, Luan did a whimsical watercolour of a bloupypie, a delicate blue flower that looks like something La Motte would make essential oils from. Now all we have to do is stick the labels on the bottles…
