Day 12 - #winning

Today was the day of the wine tour at Haut Espoir in the winelands (obviously) outside of Cape Town. It was absolutely gorgeous out in the winelands! We all decided we would live there. We were able to taste 6 of their specially made wines: 1 white wine, and 5 reds. Luckily for me, I actually like reds better! Most of the girls at our tasting table preferred the white. Then we were told that we would be dividing ourselves into 6 groups and mixing the wines to make our own concoction- the owner along with 4 of the other staff members would then be judging which was best, and the winning group would get a case of their most popular wine, the Gentle Giant. We obviously wanted to win! 12 bottles of great wine were at stake!

view of the vineyeard on the walk up to the winery

            Laura Claire, Katie, Ches, Erin, Blair, Katie, Sara, Sarah and Kristen and I were in a group and it was business time. First we tasted all the wines and wrote down our thoughts about each one and their particular tastes. Then it was time to determine which ones we should mix to get a nice blend. We had a vignier, merlot, cabernet sauvignon, shiraz, petit verdot, and Gentle Giant to choose from. We made a couple test rounds in small quantities before finally deciding on the proper recipe for our wine! After some creative naming of “proof is in the pudding,” we were pretty confident in our choice. Later, the judges took the 6 wine blends from the groups and went to judge them. We actually won! It was great! I don’t think I’ve ever really won something along those lines…I get in a big competition type deal like that, and I just look at the odds that there are 5 other groups and the chances of us actually winning isn’t that great. So then I just play along, but without such a competitive edge. This time it worked out really well for us!

Ches and Erin making the testers

our winning group with Rob, the vinyeard owner

our winning bottle!

            After the wine tasting the bus took us into the town area where we could go get lunch and possibly shop around a little while. We all tried to split up fairly well so we wouldn’t overwhelm one of the little restaurants around. This town was super cute- a little downtown feel with quaint shops and the wine lands and mountains in the background, along with trees and their leaves turning all the colors of fall- it all made for such pretty scenery!

Laura Clair, Katie, McKenzie and I at Haut Espoir

            Ish had arranged for us to have the opportunity to visit a mosque here in Cape Town during one of their prayer services. They pray 5 times a day, usually at one of the mosques in the city. Even though it had been a long day, we decided this was such an incredible opportunity that we probably wouldn’t get again- we went! It really was such a neat experience- Ish’s cousin is actually the leader of that mosque so we got to talk with him for a little while and have a Q&A session about their faith. We were all up in the second floor of the mosque, generally where the women go when they come to pray. From here we had a pretty good view of the men below and Ish’s cousin leading the prayer right about an hour after sunset.

outside Haut Espoir

the little town outside of the winery where we had lunch

            After our long day, a group of us decided to go to Wang Thai for dinner. When the waiter was bringing our food out a while later, he kept saying “chicken noodles, chicken noodles?” No one had ordered these chicken noodles apparently. Well…my funny-named food never comes, and everyone is convinced that those noodles must be mine! I’m going nono…I ordered some sort of 4-word something or another! So I finally ask him what the actualy, long name of the dish is and he says “chicken noodles” (with a duh attitude, I might add). Apparently that’s what I’d ordered. Whatevs, it was great!