After celebrating our housemate Annabelle’s birthday last night, we struggled out of bed to go to Stellenbosch for the Spier Wine Harvest Festival. To quote my (completely unpretentious) copy of “South Africa’s Winelands: A Visitor’s Guide”—courtesy of a Monday night dinner delivery from Taylor Corr—“Spier’s historic Cape Dutch buildings and beautiful riverside gardens set the stage of a permanent celebration of the finer things in life: delicious food, superb wine, fine art, and music.” Couldn’t have put it better myself. Which is why I didn’t. Really though, this place had everything you could ask for from a wine festival: awesome live music, people mashing wine grapes with their feet in big vats circa “I Love Lucy,” delicious food, generous wine tastings, and a ton of really cute South African babies running around. Quick aside—I half-jokingly (not to mention loudly) said something about “wanting to steal one the babies” because she was so adorable. Literally seconds later, a man gets on the mic to make an announcement asking everyone to look around because a family can’t find their little girl and is really worried. FML. Thankfully they found her within a few minutes—keeping her face off a milk carton and mine off South Africa’s Most Wanted list.
Kidnapping allegations aside, this wine festival felt like a hippie-chic vineyard in Napa. Just as I was starting to forget, I was reminded of why Africa is far cooler than the states will ever be. And here it is… There is one key difference between the wineries in Stellenbosch, South Africa and those in Napa, California: CHEETAHS. Unfortunately, I don’t mean the run-away success that is the Disney pop group, “Cheetah Girls.” I mean real live cheetahs. Speir is home to the Cheetah Preservation Project that works to…preserve cheetahs in the form of a project. Basically, local farmers were frustrated with cheetahs killing their livestock and had busted out their Remington Bull Action Rifles (which God created on the third day to fight the dinosaurs… and the homosexuals) to take matters into their own hands by shooting a lot of cheetahs—which is slightly problematic, because they are endangered. But the farmers didn’t know what to do because the cheetahs were killing off their livestock and effectively their livelihood. But to play cheetah’s advocate for a second (not that I advocate cheating, EVA—love you) their natural habitat was being infringed upon by the spread of farming in the region. So some people established a cheetah conservation fund to raise money for breeding and raising these huge Anatolian guard dogs that scare away the cheetahs just by barking. Which, as we all know, prompted the South African Cheetah Population/ Baja Men joint collaboration in the catchy tune, “Who Let the Anatolian Guard Dogs Out?!” The program is working really well—since it was introduced, livestock losses have been reduced 95%-100% and the cheetahs are alive and well.
To make an already long-winded story just a little bit longer, while still keeping it kinda brief—Elle and I got to pet a cheetah!!! There is an outreach program at Spier Vineyards, and the proceeds go towards the Cheetah Preservation Project. At petting zoos in the states, absolute best-case scenario is petting goats or feeding some rabbits. But we actually got to pet Jack, a beautiful and surprisingly soft cheetah. The guidebook was right, Spier really does celebrate the finer things in life: cheetah and wine. A great pairing.
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