Posts Tagged ‘Paarl’
Avondale – an exercise in Bio-Logics
Sunday, June 20th, 2010
I have known the Grieve family since 1958. The current custodian’s grandmother Julie and my mother Dulce were the stalwarts of the National Council of Woman and the Black Sash and village municipal councillors and ultimately Julie became Mayor of Durbanville and my mother became Mayor of Gordon’s Bay
In those early days, the Grieves ran a successful business known as Vital Health Foods if memory serves me correctly producing health supplements.
Now the family, under the custodianship of Johnathan Grieve, Julie’s grandson runs a superb winemaking operation in Paarl called Avondale.
The first thing that must be said is that Avondale produces some
Glen Carlou
Thursday, June 4th, 2009
Glen Carlou, a 145 ha vineyard near Paarl, is one of the region's finest wine estates. Purchased several years ago by well-known South African winemaker, Walter Finlayson, twice named as Diner's Club Winemaker of the Year, who recognised its potential for producing wine grapes of outstanding quality.
No stranger to the rehabilitation of wine farms or the production of fine wines, Walter transformed Glen Carlou by careful preparation of almost topsoil free soils and followed by the planting of virus free varieties. In 1989 the Winery whose design incorporates ideas used in the winemaking regions of the USA and France was built into the mountainside at
Landskroon Wines
Sunday, June 7th, 2009
I first visited Landskroon in the late 1970’s and met the gentle giant of a man who was Paul de Villiers who looked after the wine production and his brother Hugo, who ran their prize Jersey Stud and their wives who were twin sisters. And their mother Madelief, one of the great ladies of the Cape. She ran a beautiful house with an immaculate garden and served the most wonderful tea you have ever come across in a country home. Taking London Wine Merchants there who felt they had experienced everything was to silence them with the awe in which they held this elegantly