Open Day 2010 – A Post Mortem

by Ellen Cilliers

The best laid plans…it is an old refrain, but driving out to the winery on Saturday morning was a bit heart in mouth. Overcast skies, rain in parts, windy, cool. Exactly the opposite of every other day in the week so far, and of most of this balmy winter in the Western Cape.

The main problem that this posed was that we had decided to take Open Day outdoors in 2010. Under the trees in front of Long Table Restaurant, and near our grassed area overlooking the vineyards where we were also going to have a soccer shoot out.

Two hours from the whistle however, we decided to move everything indoors to the cellar, which required some quick thinking and a bit of heavy lifting in parts, but everything was in place by the time the Haskell patrons started rolling in at 10am.

The day kicked off with a Masterclass from Rianie at 10am, which was fully booked weeks back. She concentrated on Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and showed how the combination of the two ( and their relations Petit Verdot, Malbec and Cabernet Franc) are often greater than the sum of their parts.

Then it was upstairs for a tasting of every Haskell wine we have in bottle at the moment, including the multi award winning Haskell Pillars Syrah 2007 and the unreleased Haskell IV 2007. At the same time Werner was over in the tasting room pouring Dombeya, and as the punters started to roll in things got quite busy.

It was great to see so many enthusiastic wine lovers in one place, and to note the enjoyment that everyone got out of tasting ( and drinking!) our wines. We’ll be back again next year for another Open Day.

Oh, and the weather? Pretty good, all things considered, and hardly bad enough to warrant moving inside. But as they say, you don’t get to choose your relatives or the weather, so in the full scheme of things we probably made the right choice when all is said and done. Many thanks to everyone who took the time to join us on the day. See you again in 2011.


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