With a middle of the week holiday and the day off from work, as a self send off before going our separate ways for the Holidays, we decided to spend the day wine tasting in Constantia. Constantia is about 15 min from us, pretty much just a suburb of Cape Town. Not every city has its very own vineyard-filled suburb! It was a beautiful summer day (though that feels strange to say in December), and overall very enjoyable. As always, the wines were lovely, and it was really relaxing to just sit back and take in the scenery. We visited Groot Constantia (the oldest vineyard in South Africa, founded in 1685) and Steenburg. We even dressed up for the occasion and tried to look grown-up, since wine tasting by definition sounds classy.
We were particularly looking forward to visiting Groot Constantia since it’s so famous, but our true nature caught up to us and we suffered a few minor mishaps while there. Embarrassing Incident #1: Byron walks up to the bar and makes small talk with the wine pourer/wine expert. He grabs a brochure off the counter and says everything looks great and he’s excited to read more. The wine pourer informs him the brochure he just took was in Chinese. Byron tells him with a straight face that of course it’s in Chinese, we have a roommate who speaks Chinese (pointing to Wenli). When Julia, Wenli, and I make our way up to the counter to have our glasses filled, the wine pourer gives us a brochure in English and asks us to please deliver it to our friend, who just took the one in Chinese and “tried to act really cool about it.” Needless to say, much laughter ensued and the beginning of our downfall at Groot Constantia began.
After the tasting room, we drove down to the cellars to sign up for a cellar tour, where Embarrassing Incident #2 took place. We were 5 min early, so I figured I might as well use the bathroom. That was all well and good…except for the fact that I subsequently could not leave the bathroom. Yup, the lock-turn-thing on the door and pad-lock part of the lock just sort of disconnected, leaving no way to turn the lock. Luckily Wenli was also in the bathroom, so I wasn’t stuck without anyone knowing about my fate. The door went all the way to the floor, so there was no going under, and it was also a very tall stall, making it difficult to hoist oneself up over the top. Wenli went for reinforcements, while I tried gaining height by using the toilet seat and a small window ledge. It was much harder than I had anticipated, though admittedly I don’t think about climbing out of bathroom stalls very often. Or at least I didn’t used to. Anyway, about 5 staff people, 1 step-ladder, a ton of dust (believe me, they DO NOT dust on top of the bathroom stalls), and 20 minutes later, I was finally free. We then joined the rest of the cellar tour midway (apparently I had made a bunch of Chinese tourists very upset because I was delaying the tour, so they didn’t wait for us) but I must admit I couldn’t concentrate much once I did join – I couldn’t stop laughing at the whole situation. Embarrassing, yes, but hilarious all the same. All in all, despite not coming across as the classiest of wine tasters, we still managed to have a good time, as always. Oh, and we got a refund on the cellar tour :)
The pretty part of Groot Constantia
The not so pretty part of Groot Constantia (of course Wenli thought to document the bathroom debacle – who wouldn’t?!)
Julia helping brainstorm about what to do
Me eventually climbing up on the window ledge
And somehow managing to get over the top - freedom at last!
The Groot Constantia cellars (post bathroom debacle)
Steenburg
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