In South Africa, new wines are released from May to June. This is because early summer in the northern hemisphere is late autumn in the southern hemisphere. I visited Cape Town on a cold day in June with light snow falling, and waited for a sunny autumn day to explore the wine roads.
A beautiful coastline stretches along the road to the Cape Peninsula, the southern tip of the African continent. It is lined with luxurious villas of Hollywood stars and soccer players, and yachts are moored off the coast. During the apartheid era, it was a whites-only beach. Even though racial segregation has ended, the barrier of inequality remains high.
I went from the Atlantic side, around the Cape of Good Hope, and out to the Indian Ocean side. Even though the Ocean was the same, somehow the mood had changed. The area beyond Simon's Town was a wine-producing region. The climate here was said to be similar to Burgundy, France, and the scenery also gave me a vaguely French feel.
The first African settlers were the Dutch and English, but there were also Huguenot immigrants who were persecuted in France. It's no wonder that these people started making wine here. I drove while looking up at the vineyards overlooking the sea, while being careful of penguins crossing the road.
When I returned to the hotel, there was a small Cape Nouveau fair going on. In the lobby, stalls from local wineries were lined up. Among them, I found "Thandi" made by a winery in Stellenbosch. I was intrigued by the copy, "The first fair trade wine."
I heard that Tandi is a word that means "love" in the local Xhosa language. When apartheid ended in the 1990s, Africans and people of European descent joined forces to take on the challenge of making wine. Not only have they contributed to the community, but they have also received high acclaim from world-class wine reviews. The innovative design of the wine label, full of love, was also appealing.
I bought a bottle of Chardonnay, which had won an award at the IWSC (International Wine and Spirits Competition) in London, and opened it. When the cork was pulled, a sweet and refreshing scent spread out. It wasn't just the taste of the wine that made me feel happy.
Time has passed since then, and now "Tandy" is no longer available. By the time I emptied all the bottles I had shipped, my memories of the trip have matured. The people who cultivated love through winemaking provided the motif for writing the story "1977 -Seventy Seven," set in South Africa. (included in the short story collection "The Jet Black Pyramid")