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wine and art
bleeding into each other
I breath in the toxic fumes
of my healing heart
wine and art
the combination of nothing but spite
wine and art
I look to the for forgiveness

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Sometimes you just have to enjoy life, even though you go against the norms and values you hold. This might make me a hypocrite, or a bad person, or whatever one wants to call it, but if life presents you with certain things, you might as well take them.

For a long time, I told my fiancé, @urban.scout, that I will take her to Benguela Cove wines, and she kept to that promise. This weekend, I took her to the winery in the Walker Bay, Hermanus area, in South Africa, and she loved the place. She did not, however, like the price of the wine! The winery, renowned for its status as the “rich man’s play are”, stood true to its name.

When I visited the winery many years ago, I was stunned at its beauty, the art, the wine, and just the ambiance. I wanted to show this to my fiancé, almost 7 years after I first visited the place. Now, I had the opportunity, but since Covid and all of the financial issues in our country, the prices at this particular wine farm tripled since I visited there. She was shocked at the prices, and I was also. But we swallowed this bitter pill, and we enjoyed the art, the wine, and just the general beauty of the place.

So, please join me, as I take you on this virtual journey of this stunning place!

The Tasting Room and the Wines

The tasting room is adjacent to the art gallery. In fact, the wine barrels are left next to the art gallery to age. You can see them from next to the art, and you can also sneak peek into the private tasting cellar.

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The tasting room is beautifully decorated with couches and artworks that hang on the walls. This just adds to the atmosphere of the tasting room.

The wines arrive in the most delicate and strange wine glasses, with various tasting options, from cheese, to meats, to chocolate, or just the normal wine tasting. Beware, the tasting prices are three to four times the price of a normal wine tasting in other parts of this country. This just adds to the ridiculous rich playground vibe of the winery! (Side note, many years ago, my friends and family tracked down many of the rich peoples’ breakfast run routes, so they could see the Ferrari cars drive down the roads. This wine farm was one of their go-to breakfast spots. It just shows the status of this place.)

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The views of the Mountains

The wine farm or winery is situated in one of the most beautiful areas in our state or province. I am a bit biased as I grew up in this area, but the mountains are spectacular. I have hiked many of them in my years, and I can really attest to the beauty especially when you stan on their peaks and look down on the valley.

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The Art

What makes this place just more spectacular is the various pieces of art that they incorporate into the landscape, but also the art gallery in which you can walk. You can take your wine with and contemplate the various artworks that hang on the walls, challenging your day-to-day life, asking you to think about your own mortality.

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The Adventures and Activities

As we walked to the car, we spotted so many activities on the wine farm. They have something called “Adventure Golf” and as we walked down the stairs, they also had a massive chessboard that you can try and play. This is obviously a multiplayer game, and one that you need to attack when you are sober, as I think things might get a bit crazy when both players are wine-ed up!

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Postscriptum, or So Another Bottle of Wine Falls

The fiancé and I love to travel and visit new places. But places like the winery always challenges our value systems. It is a very expensive place, reserved for the elite crop of the country and foreign visitors who like to spend a lot of money. We hoi polloi who only visit these places for the art and the beauty of nature tend to look at the others with a certain side eye. That is, we visit these places not because we want to flaunt or show off, or even to imitate those that can afford it, but because we appreciate the small things in life. Money can buy you certain things, and it can get you places, and this is key example of that, but we do not throw it all out to show how glamourise life is. Not at all. I actually do not like to go to places like this, as it feels like a spit in our faces. But we can visit them, and we can drink the delicious wines, and we can appreciate the beauty of them. (In fact, the wine itself was not that expensive, much cheaper than the wine tasting itself. I did not take the wine tasting, merely opting to buy the wine itself. And I have to admit, the wine itself was spectacular. But the things surrounding the wine – like the restaurant, the art if you buy it, and so on – is just a flaunting of money or an easy way to escape paying taxes.

Alas, this is what we live in. For now, happy travels and enjoy the wine (or beer!).

All of the writings and musings are my own, albeit inspired by the wine and the muse that accompanied me. The photographs are my own, taken with my Nikon D300.