Cape impressions

Where I live (Sonoma), one must shop long and hard to find a representative sampling of serious South African wines. The cheap and cheerfuls are here, yet the top bottles are difficult to find on the West Coast, due largely to California/Oregon/Washington competition for shelf and wine list space.

So to say I was eager to attend the recent Cape Wine 2008 tastings in Cape Town and tour the Western Cape – my first trip to South Africa – is like saying Barack Obama and John McCain want to be US president (never mind that South African president Thabo Mbeki...