Wine Diva

I am glad it’s nearly Friday. After a long and very rainy week, the rain has cleared to reveal some very pretty and cold snow capped mountains. It’s finally time to get my Frenchie accent on and join the Bastille day festivities starting tomorrow until Sunday in Franschhoek. Doesn’t matter if you don’t “parlez vous francais?”, there is something for the pseudo French in all of us at this Franschhoek jamboree.

Not only can I swing a bit of Frenchie lingo around but I was almost French in this lifetime. I spent a year in Cannes, South of France, skipping along the Le Suquet and La Croisette mingling with famous people from the film festival, sporting my beret and cluthing my baquette and as a result I love all things Francais, especially their tendency towards procrastination and deliberation. A kindred spirit. I will hopefully capture some of that blue, white and red essence this weekend as I join the festivities in Franschhoek.

Things to do includes a MINI French film festival, food and wine banquets aplenty, a farmers market, a Porcupine Ridge barrel rolling competition, a Pierre Jourdan Boules tournament in aid of SPCA, a fun run and long walk, a chef and waiter race. It’s sounds like my kind of French-cursion!

Quick history catch up – Bastille Day is a French national holiday, celebrating and commemorating the birth of modern day France and the beginning of the French revolution when the French citizens stormed the Parisian prison, Bastille, a symbol of Louis the 16th absolute rule, on 14 July 1789. Storming the Bastille indicated the desire for change and led to liberty, equality, and fraternity for all French citizens when the first republic was created in 1792. In France, the holiday is also called “quatorze juillet” meaning 14 July or “Fete Nationale” translated national holiday.

Et alors, bon weekend a vous tous, bonne fete en Francais et Franschhoek, et au revoir!

ps: Bring on the sunshine.

What the weather man said on the radio begs repeating, 100% chance of rain! That means there is 100% chance I will be enjoying more red wine tonight. I saw the Gauteng refugee hadedah this morning and he was pretending to be a duck as he paddled around the swimming pool that used to be a grass patch slurping up the drowned earthworms. “Good weather for ducks,” I said.

Now if only it was raining straight men, but it’s not! Today, the lions, tigers and bears situation of yest’day has progressed somewhat and it’s at this moment yowling down rhinos, elephants and hippos. Yowzer, I say, we may have reached our water logged limits. Well, I hope the vines are having fun.

I currently have the added complication of having to take Missy out on the front lawn to do her business because the back door is swelled shut. I am scared that if I do manage to get it open, I won’t get it closed again and then I will join the heavens and open the water works. Anyway, just another 100% rainy day here in the winelands, nothing much else to do except talk about the weather and drink wine, over to you…

Caroline Lowings, blogging live from a wine farm in Paarl, Western Cape. It is no longer piddling down cats and dogs. It’s progressed somewhat and is now pelting down in torrents of big ass lions, tigers and bears. The sky is raining it’s eyes out. What makes a wine diva venture out of the city dryland and into the winelands pond life after having done a Cape Wine Academy course that informed her that it rains (a shit load) during winter in the Cape winelands and that it’s good for the vines blah blah… I am thinking… still thinking… putting on my gum boots… still thinking… putting on my rain coat… still thinking… not really sure but I can’t blame it on the red wine because there is lots of red wine up in the highveld, so it must have something to do with delaying gratification… because I am imagining how great summer better be. My mom was bragging this morning that it’s sunny with blue skies up there in the Gauteng province, subzero and frost yes, but it’s dry and sunny and laundry isn’t an issue! Now to console myself I’m going swim to the tasting room for a tot of brandy, and yes I know that is called drinking on the job. Ah ha, that’s it, the perk has finally dropped – it’s called drinking on the job.

Little Miss Wine Diva went to the winelands in a shower of rain, she stepped in a puddle, right up to her middle , and missed the highveld all over again.

PS: Anyone willing to trade a tumble dryer for a dishwasher please apply within.