Wine tasting notes from trips we have taken.
Lafupa Camp is located at the confluence of the Lafupa River into the Kafue River in Kafue National Park, Zambia. Birding and fishing were spectacular, and we enjoyed evening game drives. We were serenaded by hippos and kingfishers in the mornings and visited by an elephant or two. It was another great stop on our Ultimate Africa Safari with Overseas Adventure Travel.
After two days in Chobe National Park we moved on to the Okavango Delta. We were up before dawn and headed out early to the Kasane International Airport. We flew from there into a dirt air strip near our tented camp in the Okavango Delta. Our adventure continues.
Chobe National Park is enormous, about 11,000 sq kilometers in area. It, along with the Chobe Forest Reserve occupy the northeastern corner of Botswana. We explored but a tiny portion of the National Park, mostly along the banks of the Chobe River between Ngoma and Serondela, but also traveled through areas of the park distant from the river. The scenery was beautiful and the animal sightings plentiful.
Travel is great fun and so is wine. Combining the two can be twice the fun. As we planned our trip to Africa, we knew we would be tasting many wines from South Africa. In fact we extended our stay to do just that. But, we also wanted to try and find wine from at least one of the other countries we would be visiting. We succeeded in tasting four interesting wines from Bushman Rock Estate in Zimbabwe while we were in Botswana. What a great wine adventure!
Baobab Safari Lodge is situated above the Chobe River in Botswana along a broad open forest that slopes toward the river. It isn’t far from the Ngoma Bridge which reaches between Botswana and Namibia. In July the river forms a series of narrow channels in the area due to decreasing water levels. High water is generally in April and May after which it begins receding until January when water levels again begin to rise.
The flying time between California and South Africa was a grueling 22 hours in length for us (not counting a 4-hour layover). We tried hard not to think how long a time that really is. To that end, we officially began our trip with a toast made with Graham Beck Brut NV, what else? We have had this delicious South African sparkling wine made in the Method Cap Classic style (South Africa’s Méthode Traditionnelle) several times. It is always delicious and just what we wanted to celebrate the beginning of what we expected to be an exciting vacation.
Pete and I have wanted to visit Africa for a long time. It’s something we have talked about over the years, often in the afternoon with a glass of wine in hand, in our back yard. Vacation day dreaming! But finally our plans turned from wistful thinking to planning…over a year of planning actually.
We recently had a great vineyard tour at Stolpman Vineyards, located in the Ballard Canyon AVA within the Santa Ynez AVA. It was a warm December afternoon and we were met by Joe Neenan who took us on a driving and walking tour of the vineyards. We wrote about that tour in a prior post.
Wine tasting is fun any time of year, but tramping through a vineyard in December? It might sound crazy, except that we recently did just that and had a great tour thanks to Joe Neenan, ‘Passionista’, from Stolpman Vineyards.
Karyl Wilhelm, winemaker at Wilhelm Family Vineyards, is a woman on a mission. She makes an astonishing number and variety of wines. Her husband, Kevin, is the vineyard manager. They planted their vineyard in 2005. The quality and quantity of their vineyard has improved every year as Kevin learns what works best in the vineyard.
We enjoy wine, food and travel. Pull That Cork is a chronicle of our wine adventures, the food and wine pairings we create and our travels which are increasingly organized around wine.