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| << July25, 2005 - Turtle Essays edition no 140 dated 25.7.2005 |
August08, 2005 - Turtle Essays edition no 142 dated 8.5.2005 >> |
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Turtle Essays Edition no 141 dated lst August 2005 ** Sometimes one gets lucky! I did when I came across this site by accident. Its offers stunned me so I decided to try it out to see if it was for real. It Was! This amazing members-only website run by a top internet marketer, is UNIQUELY available: at http://www.pr-pl.com/a.php?ELn Check it out today and get some of the free stuff offered as bonuses. ** In this edition: Editor's Blurb Story of Wine in South Africa Wine Making ** Editor's Blurb Hi there Folks! Welcome once again to Turtle Essays and a special welcome to my new readers. This past week and for the following two weeks I will be in training to become a ??? legal tourist guide ??? for the Cape Town area. Once I have qualified which should be sometime towards the beginning of October I will be available to do tours for visitors to Cape Town. This is just an advance notice and I will be advising you in later ezines of the tours and the prices I will asking. As the winelands are an important part of a tour guides course I am going to give you a little of the history of wine in South Africa and then an overview of some of the processes used to produce the many colours and tastes you will come across when visiting wine farms and wine outlets here in Cape Town and elsewhere. I hope you enjoy them. Look out for the next few weeks articles where I will expound on some of the places I have visited during the course. See you all next week. Geoff Fairman ** Story of Wine in South Africa In South Africa wine making started with the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck way back in 1652. His task was to establish a refreshment station for ships passing the Cape. In those days ships took about three months to sail to the Cape from Holland and as there was nowhere to get fresh water and supplies en route many of the sailors on board developed scurvy and died. Van Riebeeck who was a medical doctor knew that wine would help in the prevention of scurvy. With this in mind that he planted the first grapes in South Africa. It took a while for the vines to produce grapes and when they did the first wines were rough and ready. When Van Riebeeck left the Cape in 1662 he left a growing wine industry but unfortunately the wines were not of a high standard. Simon van der Stel was sent to the Cape as governor in 1679 and after doing a full inventory of projects being undertaken in the Cape also did a tour of the Peninsula and outlying areas of the Cape towards the Hottentots Holland mountains. On this tour he discovered the Stellenbosch, Franschhoek Drakenstein area which he identified as areas good for agriculture. Part of his investigations also revealed that the wines of the Cape were not as good as they could be and so he made it one of his tasks to improve the industry. For all his hard work in the Cape he was granted a farm close to the mountains in what is today called the Constantia valley. To prove to the wine industry that good wines could be made in the Cape he set up a model wine farm. Soon his wines were being exported abroad and graced the tables of royalty and gentry throughout Europe. One of his most well known clients was Napoleon Bonaparte who asked for a glass of Constantia wine on his deathbed. Improving the wine industry was a task that could not be done by one man so van der Stel started looking around for people who could come to South Africa to assist in improving standards. He got lucky when the French revoked the Edict of Nantes, an act which set off the persecution of the French Huguenots for their religious beliefs. The Huguenots were skilled farmers and winemakers and were part of the upper class in France at the time. Persecution became so bad that the Huguenots were forced to leave France and this gave van der Stel the opportunity he was looking for. He negotiated with 200 of them to come to South Africa and promised them farms and implements if they came. As they were refugees and had nowhere to go they agreed to come and when they arrived he settled them in the Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Paarl areas. The Huguenots soon got themselves organised on their farms and soon were producing some excellent wines. Over the years the fledgeling wine industry started by van Riebeeck has grown substantially. Today there are 19 different wine routes throughout the Western Cape with hundreds of wine farms and estates included in them. Of interest is the fact that South Africa has in excess of a 100 different cultivars of grapes on the various farms. However not all of them are used in making wine. The most important cultivars used for white wines are Riesling, Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, Weisser Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and Colombard. For red wines the following are the main cultivars: Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinotage, Shiraz, Tinta Barocca, Merlot, Pinot Noir and Cinsaut. Cape Town has recently been nominated as the fifth most popular destination for world travellers and much of this acclaim has been brought about by the wine routes and the services they offer visitors to the Cape. When planning your next trip to Cape Town include some of the wine tasting tours in your itinerary as not only will you get to taste some of South Africa's excellent wines but will visit some of the most historic and picturesque places Cape Town has to offer. We look forward to your visit soon. Geoff Fairman ** Wine Making in South Africa. One of the growing industries in South Africa is that of wine making. Slowly but surely our wines are becoming known throughout the world and the industry is growing in leaps and bounds. Where fruit farmers once farmed with apples and pears many of them are ripping out their orchards and establishing vineyards. South Africa produces a large variety of red and white natural wines and then also some of the very best fortified wines as well. The question is how do farmers and winemakers who use about 13 cultivars as their main wine making grape get so many different tastes out of these few cultivars. In the cultivars used there are a selection of white and red grapes and all of these grapes produce a white juice when pressed. White juice out of red grapes I hear someone asking. Squeeze a red grape and see for yourself. The juice is white. So, how do the farmers get the colour into the grapes? Once the red grapes have been pressed and the juce is pumped into the fermentation tanks the skins are left in the tank for a period of time depending on what type of wine is planned. If its a Rose' wine then the skins are taken out after a number of hours. If its a medium body red wine the skins are left in for a number of days and then removed. A full bodied red wine is made with the skins being left in the fermentation tanks until such time as the fermentation process is complete. All red wines in South Africa are produced as dry wines. This means that the sugar in the grapes is turned into alcohol by the fermentation process and so the wines become sour or dry to the taste. Winemakers use a Balling meter to test the sugar content of grapes in the vineyard and normally harvest the red wine grapes when the reading is about 18. This means that grapes are not completely ripe and that there is not a lot of sugar in the juice. White wines are produced in more or less the same manner as the red wines. The major difference is that the skins are not used in the process of making white wines. The same Balling tests are used on the grapes in the orchards and to get sweeter white wines the grapes are firstly left to ripen on the vines and are harvested later than the grapes used in red wines. This means that the sugar content in the grape is higher when harvested. Once the wine is in the fermentation tanks a sweeter wine is allowed only a short time to ferment so that not all the sugar is turned into alcohol whereas in a dry wine such as a riesling the process is allowed to continue until the end of the fermentation process. By manipulating the various processes that wine making encompasses the winemaker is able to produce a whole variety of different wines from a single cultivar of grape. When different cultivars of grapes are blended an even greater variety of tastes and flavours can be produced. In this article I hope I have stimulated your interest in wines and especially the wines produced here in South Africa. Next time you visit Cape Town do take a cellar tour through one of our many wine producing farms and find out more about this very interesting industry. Cape Town will be proud to welcome you. Geoff Fairman ** Turn your dog into the best behaved pooch on the park with Secrets of a Professional Dog Trainer Guide Book http://www.dogproblems.com/clicksecrets.htm?hop=brerrabbit ** Turtle Travels new blog is online now. http://turtleessays.blogspot.com There are some interesting new articles being posted today. Be sure not to miss them. ** Start your own home nursery and earn yourself some pocket money! Find out how to do it from an expert. Here is his link: http://hop.clickbank.net/?brerrabbit/mcplants ** For my personal details, contact address, and warnings regarding products advertised in this ezine please read the disclaimers which can be found at: http://www.turtlesa.com/Disclaimer.html |
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| << July25, 2005 - Turtle Essays edition no 140 dated 25.7.2005 |
August08, 2005 - Turtle Essays edition no 142 dated 8.5.2005 >> |
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