He lives in Franschhoek, in the heart of the South Africa’s wine country, where we took up residence this week in the middle of a wine vineyard at the Reeden Lodge. Down the way, the estates of the Rothschilds and the Agostas and Ruperts were nestled in a U-shaped valley with rugged mountains on three sides.
The French Huguenots started the vineyards here long ago and gave their vintages French names to fool the unsuspecting. The influence remains with the estates calling themselves La Provence, La Motte, Le Petite Ferme, Le Bonheur and so on, with the same intent to confuse still clearly in mind. The important point to remember is that these South African wines compete with the best in the world, even with the French and Californians from Napa Valley, which Franschhoek reminds me of. They are cabernets, pinots, gamays, chardonnays, and their own local grape is the famous pinotage.
My friend, Peter Younghusband, wrote for Newsweek in the old days when the Telex was still used to send stories to New York, a system that seems now as dated as smoke signals. Peter wrote about the changing political and social patterns of modern Africa. In the early 1970s, while I was in Nairobi, he and I had the chance to work and travel a little together.
He cut quite a figure in those days, inches short of seven feet tall and broad shouldered. He could not be overlooked, and his perpetual welcoming smile endeared him to his colleagues. He is half-Afrikaner, raised by an English family, and he knows Africa as well as anyone. Where he found an interest in wine, I do not know. But, while still working for Newsweek, he started a vineyard, which he called Haut (yes, the French complained and threatened to sue) Provence that put his village of Franschhoek on the international wine map with a vintage that Peter named Angels’ Tears.
Peter and his wife, Jill, welcomed us to their beautiful home on the side of a hill west of Franschhoek, overlooking the entire valley of vineyards and Peter’s new estate, which he has named Spooky Mountain. We drank a fine chardonnay from his cellar saved from Haut Provence and reminisced. In front of Peter on the table lay a book that was hard to ignore, “Huberta,” it was called, and subtitled: “The Story of the Hippopotamus That Became World Famous.”
“Oh, Huberta,” Peter said, smiling, surprised at my question. He recently wrote and published the famous hippo’s biography as a children’s book, with the help of architect-illustrator Michael Ravenscroft. “She lived in the 1920s and was known all over the world for walking more than one thousand miles. I’ve wanted to write about her for years, and I finally got around to it.”
Peter signed a copy for Molly and Fraser, and the evening went by as they do sometimes with old friends. Meeting a familiar face is one of the surprise pleasures of traveling for as long as we are. Peter is a gentleman and a man of many agreeable parts, and meeting him again has already made my trip to South Africa memorable.
While in Franschhoek, we prepared some of our own meals at the Reeden Lodge and were getting ready to put the pasta on, when our host, Henry Mayer, invited us to restaurant called Traditions, in which he has an interest. It seems that the Traditions’ chef was testing a new menu and needed guinea pigs. Charlie and I like to experiment and agreed, but when we arrived and sat around the kitchen table, only a glance at Traditions’ new offerings suggested that we were out in the bush, cuisine-wise.
African game dishes hold no appeal for me. Maybe it is because they seem touristy and altogether unnecessary, a little like eating chocolate-covered ants and rattlesnake steaks. The Traditions menu was weighted with kudu, gazelle, ostrich, “boar,” which is African warthog, and denningvleis, a meat that is roasted sometimes over days, probably for good reason.
I stared at the menu in silence, wondering why this place of all those in Franschhoek, which is the gourmet capital of a nation known for the very high quality and variety of its food and claims three of South Africa’s top-ten rated restaurants.
We prepared for the carnage-to-come with a bottle of 1999 Eikenhof cabernet sauvignon, and we checked for ambiance. “Traditions” is an old Franschhoek family homestead, circa 1925, with polished wood floors and tables that are crafted out of the house’s original Oregon pine beams. We chatted with Henry about the American elections-in-waiting (see sidebar) and the region’s Huguenot history, until the chef brought out our dinner, and just as suddenly, all my apprehensions melted away.
The white plates were huge, decorated with fruit sauces, and my “trio of game” was overlaid with a lavender bud on a stem. I looked down at three small medallions that circled a pepper stuffed with yellow maize and vegetables, and balsamic roasted pearl onions. The jus was of the Amarula fruit from Namibia that falls from trees, ferments in the torrid sun and intoxicates the baboons and elephants that prize its sweet taste. My response to the meal was measured by my complete silence.
Charlie, meanwhile, was looking over a plate of springbok, or gazelle. But this was springbok carpaccio, a thin slice of raw gazelle, balanced with pickled beetroot and garlic dressing. She cut a slice and ate. She sighed with pleasure.
Later, over a dessert of Malva pudding and a glass of a locally made after-dinner wine of must fortified with chardonnay, called Ratafia, Traditions’ imaginative owners, Kalf and Sandra van Zyl, and its chef, Roy Richards, told us how they have searched old South African recipes and food chronicles to create menus that are historic in concept but modern in style. Sandra added, “But we put taste above everything.” Charlie and I will be their guinea pigs any day.
