What an amazing day out here. The sun is shining, the wind has finally gotten a little tired of doing its best to blow us away and we are looking forward to a weekend filled, to the brim, with amazing sporting duels, stuffed, like any good chicken breast should be, with Semillon, and loads of laughter from the kids.

People are often asking us where they can buy our wines online. eWine is South Africa’s premier online source to buy wines here, in Germany, and soon, in their new office in Japan. They will virtually ship it anywhere in the world, so really, there are no excuses anymore for you to not be stocked up on the best wines South Africa has on offer.

go check it out by clicking the link here.

Tomorrow night, Wednesday the 28th of October, 2009 (I know, almost November already!) will see a fantastic event happening out in Noordhoek, at Rioja Restaurant. They have recently moved venues, so take note of the following, from their website:

Rioja Restaurant has moved premises to Solole Game Reserve, Noordhoek. The buffalo are still wandering, springbok are still greeting you at the gate as you enter the Solole Game Reserve. The tranquille setting lends itself to a lingering lunch, a romantic dinner or even the quick pizza and beer.

Rioja’s menu still has the tapas style starters to choose from, the favourite mains are in the menu as well as daily specials on the black board. The Italian style wood fired pizzas are as thin-crusted as before and homemade ice creams and cakes are prepared daily for the sweeter tooth.

Rioja have teamed up with TEARS to do a wine tasting with the hope of raising some much needed funding for their amazing cause, which simply, presents itself as:

What Does “TEARS” Do?

* “TEARS” is run by a committee, ably assisted by a team of volunteers, and is purely voluntary.
* We rescue dogs, puppies, cats and kittens from abuse, cruelty, neglect and starvation and offer shelter to abandoned animals. They come from the townships, the freeways, and industrial and residential areas.
* We run an informal clinic from a shipping container in the centre of Masiphumelele (Site 5) on the Kommetjie Road, offering basic help to the township animals, such as dipping and de-worming, arranging for spays/neutering, homing puppies, hospitalising injured animals, supplying kennels, collars and limited food. We are also active in the Ocean View, near Kommetjie, and visit the Red Hill informal settlements once a week, providing the same services as we do for Masiphumelele.
* We also respond to hundreds of calls for help from the general public from areas ranging from our local communities to as far as the Northern Suburbs, Milnerton and Table View.
* All our rescued animals are vaccinated, de-wormed and sterilised by veterinarians.
* People wishing to adopt an animal are interviewed either personally or on the telephone and home visits are made to ensure the home is suitable, e.g. high walls, warm sleeping conditions, being taken in as part of the family, regular exercise, veterinary care when necessary.

What an amazing cause, right? As you all know, Haut Espoir is particularly vocal when it comes to the environment, and animals get the same amount of respect from all of us here in Franschoek.

Officially the tasting begins at 7:30pm, and you can find the details here on our Facebook page.

We are asking you to bring something, anything really, to benefit the animals who are a part of TEARS and their efforts. Blankets, petfood, shelter, and yes, even ZAR will be accepted to really make a difference to those people who donate their time and effort selflessly to help animals who have run out of options in life.

We hope to see you there…

I am having a cracking morning behind the desk, getting the new labels signed off and furiously attempting to crunch as much admin as possible before the big Uncorked weekend coming up.  In my mind I am tasting the prawns and shiraz from Lynx right now.  And with all the gees that’s building up for Uncorked I cannot help but play Zinkplaat and the Orange Stilettos and look through old hard drives for pics from our rip snorter last year with the Zinkstilettos.. and here they are.

See you in the Hoek this weekend.  Ill be the big guy with red wine stains on his shirt…

Unfortunately we wont be opening up the cellar this year for Uncorked and the music and gees will be sorely missed, however keep track of these guys, they are a seriously talented bunch.

However you can catch our wines at The Conservatory along with the Salmon Bar and Maison.   You can find the full Uncorked programme here.

So what started out as a pretty pissed off spider, relatively irate as you can see from the stance at being disturbed when I opened up the office this morning.. turned out to be one of the better  ’shoots’ ive had with the insect life on Haut Espoir in a while.  I bumped into an amazing Metallic Longhorn yesterday, (you can find that on my posterous page right….here) That was a bit of mission, waiting for the wind to stop tearing the fynbos apart, and the shiny blue guy wasnt exactly sitting still.  So to my surprise after the rather alarming welcoming committee greeting this morning, this particular Rain Spider completely chilled out.

It led to one of my more enjoyable insect encounters.. here are a few  of the nicer shots, realise please the danger I put myself through to get these for you…the camera was millimetres away from those rather large cheliceral teeth, or fangs as most of us call them.   Before I cause wide spread panic and a rush on Doom sales throughout the country, please dont be afraid, these rather mean looking fangs are just mean looking, this particular spider is not poisonous, but I would not like to find out what its like to be bitten by one…

Enjoy!

Scary stuff no?

Ever get the feeling someones watching you?

I hope you all sleep well.  I saw something on TV ages ago  about how an average person will swallow eight spiders in their life while they sleep….and please remember its bad karma to kill spiders.