Elmarie Rabe
Elmarie is the general manager @stellenboschwineroute.
For her, all the wine farms are her children and you cannot choose between your children, right?
Her favorite blends are Chenin Blanc and Chardonnay and you can wake her in the middle of the night with a glass of MCC!
But for today she will pour a glass of Hartenberg Riesling, a perfect wine to enjoy on this day.
Christoffel Esterhuizen was granted this land in 1704 by Willem Adriaan van der Stel. Today this Riesling grape, hand-picked at daybreak to ensure the most heavenly flavours, is what Elmarie will be enjoying.
It will give her great pleasure to enjoy this appealing sweet peach and honeysuckle aromatic notes of flavour in her glass, with the aromas of chalk and river stone minerals. And where? Right here in the heart of Stellenbosch, at a pavement café, close to our budding Oak trees, listening to the vibrant energy of the people walking by on this beautiful winters day.
Johan Nepgen
(Tourguide @Stellenboschonfoot, entrepreneur and owner of A Loud Idea)
“Life is too short to drink crap wine”. For Johan, there are two types of wine. Wine you like and wine you don’t like!
Today he chooses L’Avenir Single Block Chenin Blanc. It is quite appropriate that he chooses this wine because he also loves history. The wine from L’Avenir dates back to the late 1600s when the estate was one of the very first sites identified for grape growing by the Cape’s earliest European settlers.
This wine unveils balance and complexity and he loves the honey, tropical fruits and some oaky notes on the palate. Johan’s philosophy about where to enjoy this Chenin blanc tomorrow speaks for itself: ”A crap venue with nice friends and good wine is better than a great venue with bad wine and unpleasant friends!”
Raino Bolz
Raino is the owner @adventureshopstellenbosch
It is from the cool Elgin region that Raino chooses to fill his glass tomorrow with Thelema Chardonnay. He loves the aromas of ripe peach, grapefruit marmalade; and the complex yeasty flavours complement the toasty oak in the wine.
Gyles Webb bought Thelema, a passionate family who got inspired by the story of a utopian Abbey of Theleme on the banks of the Loire, where men and women worked in harmony – “do what thou wilt”; thus the name of their estate. A sacred phoenix also appears on the bottle; because in ancient mythology it symbolizes birth, here, the birth of the two families, McLeans and Webbs.
Andre Morgenthal
Since 2016 he is the project manager of the Old Vine Project, an organization to preserve SA’s heritage vineyards.
Andre is enjoying a special bottle of Kruger Sans Chene Chardonnay. The Kruger Family wines are made from the best grapes grown in the Stellenbosch region (thus the meaning ‘Sans Chene’; without chains, because they work with vineyards cross regionally)
For Andre, it is all about visiting the old vineyard, then only you understand why viticulturally that old block survived and are able to produce such rare quality grapes. It is only then that you can feel the energy that is translated into the bottle.
He will most probably enjoy his white wine today, on the porch of his lovely house in Ryneveld Street.
