Eric Edelstein

I enjoyed the Workers holiday yesterday by doing a day trip with some friends to the wine farms around Stellenbosch.

We visited Fairview, Zandwyk, Backsberg and Waterford.

Fairview: An amazing wine farm as they also specialise in cheese, a number of which are Kosher (one of our group only eats Kosher so we tried to go to places where he could also taste). And the goat tower is a MUST SEE. I’ve watched plenty YouTube video’s but have never added a video to YouTube, so i took a video of the goats so I could see how easy it is to add a video to YouTube.

Zandwyk: Closed (although I took plenty pictures, as the view from Zandwyk is incredible)

Backsberg: Was surprised to hear they only have 3 Kosher Wines, and they only had 1 to taste - and if I had liked the Backsberg Chardonny, (which I didn’t), they only had 5 bottles left. They didn’t have any other Kosher wines left.

Waterford: Best wine tasting of the day. 7 wines and 3 chocolates to compliment the wines for R35. (the one chocolate had salt crystals in it to counter the wine - try eating chocolate with SALT in it - most of the table didn’t finish that chololate!!). I’m not a big wine buyer, but was so impressed with the Shiraz named after the co-owner ( the other owner of Waterford is Jeremy Ord of Dimension Data) that I bought a bottle - at R135 for wine from a wine farm, this wasn’t cheap, but i I was highly impressed. (and now tempted to do a wine course)

At Waterford, Ilana called me to say she had a spare GOLDEN CIRCLE ticket for the coke festival music concert. I was going to go to the concert, but thought that R600 was a little pricy, considering that the band on top of my “want to see” list, Guns n Roses, had pulled out of the concert.

So I raced from Stellenbosch to Sea Point to drop people off, and then sprinted to Kenilworth race track where the Coke Fest was being held, and got there at 6.30 just in time for Staind. I had missed Hooberstank, but still got to see 3 Doors Down, and Evanescence. All the bands were brilliant, especially when the singers from 3 Doors Down and Staind did a song together. Another highlight was 3 Doors Down ripping off Guns n Roses for not attending and singing “knocking on heavens door”. (Although the GNR version was still far better!)

I listen to Evanescence a lot, and although I enjoyed their performance, they need to lift up the mic volume for the lead singer. When Amy Lee sung on her own, her voice was incredibly powerful, but the POWERFUL guitars drowned her out.

So from WINE CULTURE to ROCK MUSIC all in one day!