Cape Town - It had been a bad day, then it was good for a little while before it turned bad again. The details are not important here, they just all combined to make us run late for the specially arranged tasting of KWV’s Mentors range of wines which had been set up for us at the Taal Monument in Paarl.
That’s when everything became good again. Soaring high on top of a mountain and visible for miles, the monument is hard to miss, but somehow I had never managed to find my way up there. Being a little pressed for time we only did a brief exploration, enough to discover it’s hollow inside, but it’s a spectacular location with wonderful views and hosts many special events.
It was a tasting like no other – and I’ve done more than a few. Hosted by Marco Ventrella of KWV, it didn’t have those little tasting glasses with tiny splashes of wine which you have to nose, swirl, sip, spit and try to sound clever about. No, it was proper big glasses, generously poured, and Ventrella did the intelligent talking. We tried them all, went back to the ones we liked best and tried them some more. Caught up in the moment and Ventrella’s promise to find me a wine farmer husband, I neglected to take notes, but I can tell you the wines were from KWV’s highly awarded flagship Mentors range and eye-rollingly delicious.
They are not cheap wines. They are excellent wines to covet and savour, made from the best grapes sourced from vineyards all over the Western Cape. Ventrella was an excellent and entertaining host (match-making skills yet to be determined). We drank, we laughed, we drank some more. This is what he says about himself:
“I grew up in restaurants and hotels as both parents were hoteliers of five-star establishments all over the world. I gave up on becoming an accountant for fear of death by boredom and instead ran nightclubs and restaurants for 10 years in Durban and Cape Town.
“I was always interested in booze beyond its wonderful effects, but how and why it’s made. This translated or perhaps transmuted into an all-consuming love for wine. I finally decided I must be a winemaker.
“I gave up my job, calmed my (now ex) wife down, studied wine and viticulture in the day and worked as a waiter at night. Halfway into the diploma I realised that, for me, the real mysteries are outside the cellar, in the soil, geology, climate and their interaction with the vine to produce a universe of flavours, textures and styles. It was at this point I promised myself I must spend at least 20 years in the vineyards.
“I started with Graham Beck Wines for eight years as their group viticulturist before joining Richard Rowe and the KWV wine team for the revolution and evolution of wine styles and quality still under way. I am unashamedly and unapologetically driven by and a slave to my passions. To steal from Charles Bukowski ‘…there is no other way and there never was’.”
Anyone who has that kind of philosophy, and quotes Bukowski, is all right by me. For more information on KWV and its wines, go to www.kwv.co.za. - Weekend Argus