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Writing about drinks has taken me all over the world – but few adventures are seared in my memory as vividly as the week I spent in Swartland, South Africa’s red-dust wine wilderness in the Western Cape.
By European standards, the wineries here are isolated: many lie at the end of long, axle-breaking tracks, on plots dwarfed by hazy-blue mountains. But the sense of community is strong. Whatever time I turned up, it seemed, there was always room for one more at the long refectory table at the heart of every household – and it was rarely long before someone was reaching for a corkscrew.
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One night the maverick winemaker Adi Badenhorst organised a braai (barbecue). Soon neighbours from all over were rolling up in battered trucks, brandishing wines made from sun-parched bush vines. As the bonfire blazed and Led Zeppelin boomed from the record player, barefoot children ran around dispensing drinks to the grown-ups, and farm dogs rolled in the dust. One moment I was saying grace with someone’s elderly mother; the next I was dancing by firelight to The Doors. People cursed in Afrikaans and talked about wine like it was religion. To my untrained ears they might as well have been speaking in tongues.