DRAGONRIDGE GOES TO KIRSTENBOSCH

Last weekend for the second year running Dragonridge joined other members of the Swartland Wine and Olive Route at the Swartland Farmers’ Market held at the Kirstenbosh Stone Cottages.
The day was warm and sunny, drawing more than a thousand Capetonians to sample the Swartland’s numerous food and wine offerings and browse amongst craft, décor items, handmade jewellery and the like.

This year Johan set off at crack of dawn, wedged in the bakkie with our two volunteers Dido Voorma (from Holland) and James Templeton (from Australia) alongside boxes of our wine, olive oil, honey and limoncello.  Late that night they returned, excited and tired and full of tales from the day.

Here is Dido’s account of the event

Last Saturday we left Fynbos at an early hour to join the Swartland Wine Market, held in the beautiful gardens of Kirstenbosch in Cape Town. Unfortunately we didn’t see much of the garden, because the market was situated on a piece of grass just outside those majestic trees. This didn’t ruin the day, quite the opposite. There were about 40 to 50 stands of Swartland food and wine producers, all having their products up for taste.

Dragonridge's stall with Dido serving.

After building up our stand we found out we didn’t bring a wooden plate to serve the bread to taste our homemade extra virgin olive oil. If we would serve it on the white tablecloth, it would probably look like a mess within two minutes. So the volunteers used their imagination and found a suitable rock nearby. Later that day we got quite a bit of compliments about the ‘oily’ rock and even one request if it was up for sale.

Next to our olive oil, we brought a few bottles of our red wine vinegar, our raw honey, our limoncello (great with tonic and mint!) and our Dragonridge wines: Cosmos 2013, our pink (Rosé) made from Pinotage; Jack’s Red (2013), made of Pinotage, Syrah and Mouvèdre; and our Sangiovese (2013), made of the likewise Sangiovese, the famous Chianti grape from Italy. Our whites Galaxy and our new bubbly wine still have to be bottled. That didn’t seem to cease popularity; we almost sold all the bottles we brought. The wines tasted fruity and pure, and the public seemed to pick up on that. Being part of the Swartland Independent Producers, we produce all our wines naturally and organically, without adding anything (think of insecticides, pesticides, water irrigation and even yeast!). 

Johan and James have their turn.

The sun kept on shining and the market got busier and busier. Johan still gave everybody the same amount of attention by explaining the way our wines are made. People instantly knew that he understands every very detail of the wine so incredibly well, which was the reason for the true wine know-it-alls to stay a long time at our stand. 

Johan and the volunteers changed shifts behind the stand and went on their own discovery tour. After tasting a fair amount of wine, one of the volunteers discovered the South African delicacy biltong and ate an incredible amount of it. Besides this, there were stands selling cupcakes, olives, cheese, fruits, jams, sausages, chicken and hamburgers. We certainly enjoyed all these culinary treasures and were glad to be part of a small feast like this.