Lost in Elgin

I am quite used to being lost, an unavoidable consequence of my having been being born without a sense of direction. I am also quite used to being lost in Elgin, an unavoidable consequence of living in meandering farmland. But, last night was a truly unique moment in the “direction”-less life of Molly Tokaz.

I had been invited to come to the Wallis’ farm for a braai because they had two English medical students visiting. Knowing how difficult finding these farms at night can be, I received double, even triple playbacks of the turn by turn directions. Past Galilelo then Pink Lady then it’s the right turn to Carmel farm…. I surprisingly knew all the markers they were referring to, and I was fairly confident that this could be my one triumph in valley navigation.

So, following the directions, I turned at Carmel and headed up the road to this fantastic, hacienda style house. There were big intricately wrought iron gates and two giant dogs contained there-in that announced my arrival. Next thing I know, a man with a snow white pony tail comes to the gate—certainly not my desired host, Paul Wallis, who is a big, jovial, Irish farmer. I tried to ask him about the Wallis’ but there was a thick accent impeding our conversation. Curious about the lilt in his voice, I asked where he was from and he responded, "Italia, Roma." I was quite surprised by this response, I was pretty sure that I would have heard about an Italian living in the valley, especially one that lived only 4 or 5 farms away. I would have thought this nationalistic anomaly would warrant some sort of gossip...

And when I say he was Italian, he was REALLY Italian. In typical, shifty, Italian fashion, the first thing he said to me was “ooo…. American accent. So sexy on a women.” Then, after a few moments of chatting, he politely told me he had to go because he had a pot of pasta cooking on the stove. I was next expecting him to jump in his ferrari, flip some pizza dough, and call out to some guy named Mario to shine his italian leather loafers. He made me promise to come back for a cappucino, which, if his coffee is anywhere as strong as his accent, is a pretty good idea. Great to know stock characters abound in this valley: first, Aussie Bob, and now, Italiano Franco.

Having left little Italy, I headed to the next entrance, also Carmel. My confidence dwindled quickly, though, when I saw the main road fork into three, equally plausible routes. Trying my luck, I choose the far left until I arrived at a large white house. Once again, a troop of dogs alerted the house-owners to my arrival, and once again a man I'd never seen emerged with a quizzical look on his face. (Not many farms get random 8pm visits...) Luckily, he said that I was almost in the right place, and that the Wallises were his next-door neighbors. So, I pulled my 10th U-ey of the night and headed back down the middle path. The first place I saw, though, had a closed gate and looked to be empty. Thinking I was wrong, again, I flipped another 3 point turn and descended past this house into orchards. Much to my chagrin, the neighbor heard my aimless driving and came to fetch me on his 4x4. (Another advantage to being in the country- it's quiet enough for people to hear you when you get ridiculously lost.) So, led by my knight on a 4x4, I was literally taken up to the gate and led to the very entrance of the house.

While farm navigation at night is clearly not my forté, the confusion is definitely worth the crazy introductions and interactions.

Oh, and as far as the braai goes, the food was amazing, but the Englishman was an infuriating, irritating bit of pomposity. As only a Brit can do, he carried on for most of the dinner alternating between stories of his greatness, admiration for the UK, and mockery of the US. He literally said, the problem with America is that it thinks what happened 60 or 100 years ago is history. I responded that the problem with the UK is their history stops 234 years ago, when they were still a victorious nation. I, too, would want to forget the last 100 years of power-slippage if I were a British "historian;" it's what we call "selective-memory."

Grape Picking

Over my time here, I have become increasingly self-conscious of my Tom-Sawyer, fence-painter syndrome. No matter what it is on the farm, all someone has to do is hand me the paintbrush and I will spend the rest of my day doing someone else's hard labor. So, just as it was with plum picking, I took to the fields this week with unusual pep and excitement to start the grape picking. While everyone around me viewed this as a laborious chore, I was more than thrilled to lend my hand to work in the fields.

To begin, grape picking is infinitely more glamorous than plum picking. Unlike with plums, there are no picker "purses" that you have to awkwardly lug around as the harvest weight pulls you down. Instead of having to sling the nylon picking satchel, in the vineyard you simply move a little crate from stalk to stalk.

Second, you don't have to worry about bruising grapes. No matter what pressure you exert on the grapes, it is is nothing compared to the extreme amount of roughness the bunches are subjected to in the press. You can hardly do the squash-ready grapes any harm, and, what's more, a little bit of jostling probably just tenderizes the fruit for the impending juice extraction. With the plums, you had to worry about bruising; with the grapes, you are footloose and fancy free!

As a third accolade for the grapes: when picking, every little cluster counts. Where as you have to cherry pick plums according to specifications of size, color and texture, all grape clusters are good grape clusters. In plum picking, only about 1/5 of your picks are selected for sale into the supermarkets whereas with grapes, virtually 100% of your picks end up in the bottle-- a very satisfying thing indeed.

This leads to the last extreme advantage that grape picking has over plum picking-- the final product. No matter how you cut it, plums picked for a fruit basket will never be as romantic as grapes plucked for wine. There is something exciting and even empowering knowing that what you're picking provides the first step in the winemaking process and that your simple fruit contributions form the organic foundation for Bacchus' elixir. Even the smell of the grapes lends to this feeling of direct romanticism; the juice of the grapes leaves a sweetly pungent aroma on your hands that I can't help but associate with the cellar.

Invigorated with the uniqueness of the grape harvest, I was to undergo an evolutionary initiation into the world of the pickers. On the first day, I was the complete oddity in the vines, the temporary fixture that fascinated and burdened the workers in equal measure. The pickers felt they had to take care of me, and, for every stalk I approached, there was one person who proceeded me, thinning the vine foliage to reveal the clusters beneath; one or two across from me supporting my shears; and one who followed me, moving my crate along the vines. I felt like the silly molly-coddled American who wants to "pick" but doesn't want to actually break a sweat. By the second day, my entourage had been cut in 1/3 and though I still had someone who moved my crate when it was full, I was responsible for the slow transport of the

crate from stalk to stalk. Though improved, I still had one guy, a young man named Anele, who would appear randomly throughout the day, with a huge smile on his face, clear off all the leaves in my path. While I felt I was becoming less of a burden, shedding one of my entourage, it was clear that I was still being "indulged." Finally, though, when I arrived on my third day in the vineyard, I felt a change beginning to unfold. I could feel the slow but sure transition from "fixture in the fields" to "member of the picking squad." Not only was I left to thin my own vines and carry my own crate, I even gleaned a picking partner who remained with me for the whole day. It was here, when I finally had my picking "mate," that I got to glimpse the coordinated satisfaction of the vine tango. One of us took up residence on each side of the stalk, and, as the day progressed, our picking developed an unflagging rhythm and silent cooperation. As we worked our way down the rows in tandem, we would stop only long enough to snip the hard to reach spots for our "mate" across the way. In this way you began to anticipate where those cross-over bunches would be, anticipating your partner's need, so that you could swoop in, unasked, for that unique snippet angle to ease their picking burden.

By the end of three days, our Sauvignon Blanc harvest was finished, but I have to say that I was not disappointed in the least. While my interest never flagged, picking is EXHAUSTING EXHAUSTING work and I was happy to be done. On friday, to celebrate the end of the SB harvest, Justin invited all the boys to the deck for a glass of Rosé. Here are some of boys in all their glory! (Freddie, Anele, Chokies, and Emen-- sorry for the spelling!)

Bob Watch #5: Cupid's Walking Shoes

As a wizened and weathered traveler, Bob scoffs at the idea of Romance. Roses and ponies are the trinkets of the more sedentary, but for the minimalist Aussie, only the necessary makes the journey. Thusly, it was not too surprising that when I brought up Valentines Day on Thursday, Bob snorted and made some comment about the commercialized waste of this "business holiday."

While I understand his view of this Cadbury/Hallmark day, this conception doesn't quite fly when you have a little lady sitting at home-- which Bob does. I have waited to divulge this detail of Bob's life until there was an equally romantic story to couch it in, but good 'ol Aussie Bob is dating our closest farm neighbor, a woman aptly named Bobby. Bobby lives right above our farm, in a small cottage, literally a herculean stones throw from Bob’s own house. A divorcé, she moved into the valley only about a year ago and Bob and her have been dating ever since. Every night, at about 6 pm on the dot, we hear Bob’s truck sidling up the pot-marked dirt road to the top of the hill where Bobby lives. Once there, Bobby fixes a dinner for the two of them, which they share until about 9 pm, at which point we hear Bob's truck retracing it's tracks to his cottage down below.

Though the actual state of their relationship is unknown to me-- sometimes there are substantial lapses in the nightly, dinner routine-- I was fairly confident that Bobby did not share Bob’s blasé Valentines sentiments. So, for about 20 minutes after Bob's Valentines comments, I prodded, nudged and lectured Bob on his call to duty for this particular holiday. I informed him that, though he may see Valentines as fruitless and frilly, she certainly didn’t, and it was his prerogative to use this day to show her that he cared.

I was pretty sure that my lecturing had fallen on deaf ears. Though Bob is a softy, he is also first and foremost the stoic, worldly Aussie. So, imagine my surprise when I walked into the office on Friday to hear Bob mumbling under his breath something about Valentines Day.

When I asked Bob what he was talking about, he sheepishly replied that he was booking two spots for the romantic, four-course Valentines lunch that we are having at Highlands. I ran up, gave him a huge hug, and told him that he was a regular Valentines Don Juan.

That night, Bobby also came over for summer sundowners. Bob was not only showered, with slicked back hair, but he had put on a shirt without holes, (something truly rare for Bob,) and jeans (which I didn't even know he owned.) In other words, in Bob speak, he had brought out the whole shebang. My conclusion: the romantic in Bob has finally emerged and Cupid has hung up his walking shoes.

Quiz Night Solidarity

As an odd bit of continuity from my life in Boulder, Quiz Night has been resurrected in the Valley, except that the Wednesday night pub venue in Colorado has been swapped for a Tuesday night vineyard in South Africa. Minor difference, really.

Of all the hidden little gems of the Valley-- spinning classes, Wednesday night rugby happy hours, book clubs, art societies-- this might top the list in terms of both originality and notoriety. Joris and Natalie, the owners of a BEAUTIFUL winery called Almenkerk have made the monthly quiz night into quite a fixture on the valley calendar. While the purpose is purportedly a bit of jeopardy, the night almost always ends with people going down the fire-pole in their cellar. This is in large part due to one of the central traditions of the night, everyone brings their own bottle of wine. In a place where most people are in the wine business, the chance to have wine from another vineyard is never taken lightly. People load up on other winemaker's goods, slightly fatigued of their own stock, which is always within arms reach. Lately, the enjoyment of the Valley wine got to such a state that people not only slid down the fire-pole, they hosted a competition to see who could shimmy up it.

Now don't think that this little bit of wine-induced mayhem keeps people from taking the business of the quiz very seriously. People in the valley can multi-task, and as serious as they are about their wine, they are equally serious about all other methods of, ahem, intellectual expansion? Maybe not, but I do know that it takes each "quiz master" at least 6 hours to write these questions and, from someone on the losing team, they are flipping difficult. This most recent quiz was written by a guy named Chris and contained around 50 questions with tangential google answers, (the one's you have to go to the third page of "page hits" to find.) The categories ranged from History and Geography to Songs to Sports to Name That Billionaire, (a section I was particularly abysmal at.) I was on a team with Shereez and Liesel, and though we all complemented each-other with diverse knowledge, we didn't culminate in an ultimate wisdom. Sad but true, we ended with a cumulative score of 14. The winning score was 22 1/2.

What was particularly cool about this quiz night, though, was that it acted as a moment of renewal after a weekend of nightmarish proportions. The Almenkerks woke up on Saturday to find a fire descending on their vineyard. There have been a couple of terrible fires raging in the hills these past few weeks, but this was the first to descend upon a nearby vineyard. The conflagration seems to have spontaneously erupted, and the authorities still have no idea where the flames originated.

However, from every tragedy arises a pheonix of hope, and it took this calamity to showcase the true beauty of Elgin Valley. Within minutes of the fire, neighbors had descended onto the

farm from the furthest corners of the Valley. Everyone had brought their tractors, water pumps, or just themselves, whatever they could find to help fight the flames. I'm very sad that I wasn't here to see the Valley at it's best, to see all the neighbors converging upon Almenkerk in a mass of farmer solidarity. I do like to imagine the swarm of buckies, coming from all the branching farms, kicking up dust clouds on the dirt roads, rushing to the dam with an open trunk carrying a water pump of their own device.

All in all, I believe about 15% of the vines were lost, a tough loss indeed but far from the catastrophic numbers that could have been sustained. What the farm will have to worry about now is smoke damage. The remaining 85% of the vines were engulfed in smoke throughout the fire-fighting process, and there is real fear about what that means for the grapes. Such delicate fruit, grapes soak in flavors from all around them, and smokiness is not typically a characteristic that you look for in Sauvignon Blanc. Everyone in the Valley is really pulling for the Almenkerks, but the real damage will only be revealed come picking day.

Bob Watch #4: Nightmares

Bob just popped in, or, more accurately materialized at the side of my couch.

After his typical, "How's it Molls," he said something truly memorable, even by Bob standards.

"The worst dream i ever had was that Dolly Parton was my mother and I was only bottle-fed. Worst bloody night of my life."

Thank you Bob, now I have nightmares all my own.

But undoubtedly one of the greatest things about Bob, besides his lack of verbal filter, is the complete paradox of his comments-- one minute he is bar-room chap, the next he is philosophizer, and the next he is my concerned granddad. You can laugh uninhibitedly at a comment like that, because you know that, in the end, Bob is the most harmless softy of them all. His crassness is just Aussie bravado, but underlying it all is the sensitive grandfather who never got to be...

Shortly after the Dolly stint, I went to go have a coffee with Bob. As I had said, no one has really talked to me about Luwatha since his death. The event has been shrouded in saddened silence, but Bob turned the tide and was able to open up freely about the man. Remaining true to memory and avoiding glorification, Bob started by saying simply that Luwatha was "the best of them." Luwatha never smoked and never drank in a community that relishes both, and he was a father of three who never skimped on a day's work. When I asked if Luwatha had been a leader of sorts, I think Bob gave him the greatest tribute of all by saying "no," a refutation that recalled the man and not some extolled version of him.

He said that far from leading, Luwatha lived a life on the outskirts as a bit of a loner. Something in the way Bob talked about the man's isolation made you feel a respectful closeness that must have existed between the two. From Bob, there was an understanding of this simple, reliable man, who, in many ways, probably fringed his society in the same way that Bob has for years. Bob respected Luwatha for who he was-- a solid, even-keeled guy who never worked himself to death, never pushed the envelope, but was constant to the end-- and when all is said and done, this man of quiet stoicism had touched his life. Before he left, Bob looked down with his clear blue eyes and slowly shook his head: "shame, such a bloody shame."

Like I said, Bob is the greatest softy of them all. If only he had had a little grandchild to bless with his stories and his wisdom...

Tragedy Befalls Highlands

I came in from a trip to Cape Town yesterday to find the whole vineyard enshrouded in the proverbial dark cloud. Dismal expressions rattled every face and all eyes were trained on the ground. I was unfortunately late for our PR meeting, so it wasn't until over an hour later that I heard the source of all of this adumbration.

It came as quite a shock when Justin said, by way of explanation, that one of the workers had just died. This initial news was a jolt, and I struggled to get a handle on the situation by grasping for the facts. In response to my inquiries I received a jumble of details-- he was given sugar water, he was at the doctors, he had heart palpitations-- but everyone was in such a chaotic place of grief that no coherent story arose. As often happens in these cases, the mortal confusion of death had truncated the story and obscured the facts in a dismal shadow. It was only today, a full 24 hours later, that the events began to come together.

The man who passed away was named Luwatha. Though the tragedy obviously touches us all, (as he was a member of the Highlands Road clan,) this dolor falls particularly close to home, as he was permanent staff, both in the cellar and in the vineyards. Yesterday morning, he went into the hospital with intense pains, and by afternoon he had died. The first I heard was that he had a chest infection, then a heart attack-- both of which seemed dubious explanations-- but I just heard from Justin that it was an aneurism. Beyond this medical diagnosis, I am still pretty much in the dark. The shock and the pain seem a bit too recent, and no one is ready to talk about it; I will have to wait for the information to sift down as time passes. I don't even know if there is a memorial service or if there will be one...

What I do know, however, is that I am left with a singular feeling of desperate responsibility. Though it is absolutely no one's fault, there is still this lingering sensation that, in some way, I could have done something. I think most of this feeling of desperation stems from the death occurring in the third world. Though I know an aneurism in any country is deadly in its expediency, I still can't help but wonder if this tragedy could have been avoided in another place. If this were to happen in the first world, would death still have been the ultimate outcome?

Though South African doctors are extremely well trained, (especially for a "third-world" nation,) this strange feeling of guilt intensely echoes an experience my mom and I had in Nepal. On our way out of Mustang, we encountered a small group of hikers who had been forced to abandon their longer trek into the Dolpo Region because of an unexpected fatality in their group. When I asked

what had happened to their compatriot, we were given two completely conflicting explanations: "he died of altitude sickness" and "it happened all of the sudden, one moment he was having trouble breathing, the next he dropped dead." Much like in this occurrence, the line between the malady, the symptom, and the diagnosis was shaky. There was an extreme disjuncture between the observed physical reactions and the supposed explanation, and it made you wonder, if the cause couldn't be determined, was there ever a chance of finding the cure? These are the moments at which you are deeply and ashamedly aware of the blessing and the comfort of having, by chance, been born in the first world. While the scenario is different here, as an aneurism anywhere is likely fatal, you still wonder if he might have survived in an ambulance rich country.

In the end, I am left feeling quite helpless. I don't know what I can do, if anything, to assuage the pain of this situation not just for the family, but for the farm as a whole. To lose someone in such unexpected, rash circumstances affects the community in a peculiar way. Day to day activities take on a decidedly morbid cognizance and undertone, and there just isn't that lightness of life anymore. In time, of course, things revert back to normal, but until then, the wake of disaster is dark and wide indeed.

What's in a Label...

The farm frenzy has recently switched locations, and it is a bit disorienting. The mayhem of the bottling truck, parked out in the front of the cellar, has closed it's doors and packed away, and now the activity has shifted to the back door of the cellar, where the labeling machine hums away. Many of the same nuances of the bottling truck

can be attributed to the labeling line-- the same bottle waltz, the same rhythmic teamwork between the workers, the same constantly mesmerizing clink of bottles-- but somehow there is a different feeling to it all. Everything is vastly simplified in the labeling process, for starters there are no more levers and everything is horizontally driven. Gone are the dip down spouts that fill the individual bottles and the lifts that bring the bottle to it's cap; all is cleaner and simpler. The bottles now have a much shorter runway on which to strut their stuff before they are twirled and slapped with their predetermined label. Life as a wine bottle is hard.

Still, it is quite amazing to see these unfinished, mysterious pieces of craftsmanship emerge as commercial-ready products. There is something intensely intriguing about an un-labeled bottle, but seeing as how un-labeled is un-branded, such things will never last...

A Southern Hen Night

While the phrase is never used in the states, bachelorette parties in South Africa, the UK and most of the rest of the English speaking world are referred to as Hen Nights or Hen dos. Appropriately named if you think about it-- this is the last time that said hen gets out of the coop before she settles in for a long period of egg incubation. So much like the metric system, the logical name "hen do" has been scoffed in the states, but after my experience on Saturday, I fully intend to resurrect this fantastic bride-to-be name along with many of the traditions that go along with it.

The day started innocuous enough. The theme of the evening was to be "Glitter, White Safari," so I headed over to my friend Liesel's to prepare. After exhausting her full supply of glitter powder and glitter stars, we packed up our gifts and headed over to MoFam, the starting place for our hen extravaganza. Arriving, we were greeted by a large green punch bowl and glasses

with special straws. Nothing like starting off your early afternoon with a bit of cream soda concoction.

The first official activity of the party was the bride-to-be dressing. With all the attendees dressed in white, it was our prerogative to make Zaren, dressed all in black, stand out as much as possible. Everyone contributed to the ridiculousness and we ended up with this (see picture to the left.) Thank god Zaren is an amazing sport, she was able to rock the hat, the garter, the shot necklace and all the rest in classy, elegant style, (or at least style...) Not wanting Zaren to feel completely exposed in her conspicuous get-up, we all decided to step up our game with some face paint. Everyone chose a phrase for their cheeks and forehead. There were many different slogans ranging from Wild to Mother of the Bride, but by far the best was "Kaptein." An inspired forehead tattoo, these words came to be the mantra of the night, and every time that Zaren blew her whistle, all the ladies and anyone else who had been taught would yell out in a chorus worthy of admiration, "kaptein." (Also doesn't hurt that this is the chorus of a very famous South African song that I have taken quite a liking to: Kapetein span die seile...)

From here, it was a very steep jaunt down to the bottom of the hill where our chariot

was waiting. Playing on the safari theme, and just to make sure we knew we were still in Africa, Shereez and Tash had organized an overlanding truck to be our transport for the night. As if this high, two decked bush vehicle wasn't eye-catching enough, they expertly adorned all the windows with special, anatomically creative cut-outs and put a giant banner across the back. Definitely the most inspired action of the evening, the banner read "Hot Bride, etc, etc" and also included Zaren's cell phone number. For the rest of the night, we would turn down the music every mile or so to take a call from someone stuck behind our slow, lumbering safari bus. You really couldn't have chosen a better bachelorette for all of this, Zaren was hilarious as the bride-to-be secretariat!

The first stop of the hen-mobile was a little pizza place in a small town called Bot River. Perhaps even more country and back-woods than Elgin, you can imagine the local diners' surprise when a giant safari bus rolled in and 11 girls in varying bachelorette array descended upon the wooden decks of the pizza parlor. I think all of the locals were amused by this band of women, but none as much as the three guys who happened to be occupying the other side of

the deck. Turns out it was one of their birthdays, a visiting Canadian winemaker, and he thought it was a pretty great magic trick to turn their 3 man birthday party into a 14 person all-out bachelorette bash.

Having sufficiently shaken up the pizza place at Bot River, (conveniently and appropriately named the Shunting Shed,) we headed back onto the road to head over the mountain to Hermanus. Certainly larger and more cosmopolitan than Elgin or Bot River, this is still a rather small beach town that largely serves as a weekend getaway for Capetownians. So while it was not quite as shocking to have a bachelorette party in Hermanus, I still wonder how often they get such a spirited group arriving in complete African safari style.

True to my pledge as a participant in the bachlorette party, little else needs to be divulged except to say that we loved Hermanus and I'm pretty sure Hermanus loved us. Except for one last eventful stint on the bus (wink), we spent the rest of the night dancing through the bars and clubs. There is really nothing quite like a giant, impenetrable ring of women in white with a bachelorette twirling in the middle.

All in all what a fantastic night! As often happens with these things, the best times were in the bus transit, when loud music and free-flowing karoake ruled the day. Even when in the clubs or the bars, it was truly being with the girls that made it so fantastic-- the venues just provided us with great music and a big dance floor! What an amazingly singular night, it certainly will be hard to ever top this Hen Do!