12. Food, Wine & Dragonridge Products
Luckily for me, Johan is not only a very good cook, but he also loves to cook. This is also lucky for everyone else, as I am truly lousy at it. For many years, where our bookings have included meals, Johan has made the food, while I have done service preparation and front of house. Johan’s style of cooking is to make simple food using as much organic and fresh produce as possible. Generally, his food could be classified as Mediterranean, but he also makes a mean Indian curry and fine Japanese and Chinese dishes. With the help of our very capable team, we have hosted workshops and retreats, family groups, parties, and weddings. Cooking is usually a noisy, happy time, and we all get to sample the wares. In the last years, Johan has received help from outside cooks, Gaen for some years, and more recently, Mandy.
At least once a week, sometimes more, Johan does wine tastings. He loves these and shows his passion by excited discussion of wine in general, and his wine in particular. Needless to say, this goes together with plenty of his own tasting.
Generally, our wine production is between four and six thousand bottles a year. The exact amount made and the specific wines produced vary each year depending on the size and nature of the harvest. However, most years we make a South African red blend (Pinotage, Mourvèdre, Shiraz), a Super Tuscan style red (Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon), and often a white blend (Chenin, Viognier). Some years, we also make Chenin, Chardonnay and Viognier as single cultivar wines. As for bubblies we usually make two; a Chenin, Pinotage and a straight Chardonnay. Vines are pruned midyear and harvest is late summer. In each case we bring in an outside team to do the work. Bottling usually also occurs mid-summer one or more years after the wines are made.
Apart from our wine and food, we make a number of products which also go under the label of Dragonridge. These include olive oil and cured olives, red wine vinegar and honey, as well as lemon products, including lemon marmalade, lemon preserve, limoncello and Johan’s famous lemon cordial (his mother Rae’s recipe). These products are sold at the farm.
Olives are our biggest crop after grapes. We have nine hundred olive trees on the farm and grow different cultivars including Frantoio, Nocellara Del Belice, Leccino, Kalamata, Mission and Coratina. Our oil is a mix of these, producing a dark, strong, peppery, extra virgin oil in the European style. April is olive picking time, and everyone is roped into helping. Olives destined for oil go for pressing to the Olive Boutique in Riebeek Kasteel, and those to be cured are stored throughout the year in big yellow buckets of brine solution.
Our lemon products come from about thirty lemon and lime trees dotted about the farm.
There are a number of bee hives on the farm, which have been the property of various bee keepers throughout the years. These hives are situated mostly in the Blue Gum trees above the farmstead, but occasionally beekeepers have also placed hives up the mountain in order to make Fynbos honey. The deal for all bee keepers is that they get to place their hives here in return for our getting ten percent of the honey produced. The amount of honey we get each year is very variable. This is due to changes in the quantity of honey made by the bees themselves, and the frequent mishaps encountered with the hives. Some years the Honey Badgers raid the hives and feast on our delicious honey, and some years the crafty baboons trash the hives and help themselves. And then sometimes neighbourhood children come across to our farm and vandalize the hives, just for the fun of it. Our beekeepers have tried many preventative measures, such as encasing the hives in barbed wire, which are more or less effective.
