Amazing Grapes, how sweet they sound

One great thing about living in the Cape winelands is that grape season is long, lasting, and filled with a huge variety of delicious cultivars - grown right on your doorstep. (We're also in fruit-producing land - apples, pears, nectarines etc.)

I've just braved the mall for a final shop for groceries, prezzies for the boys, forgotten stocking-stuffers and fruit/veg. The latter including marvellous hanepoot and red globe grapes - the taste of summer.

We have an abundance of wine farms in the area, wine routes in every direction. But did you know that we also produce over 150 varieties of grape juice within a 100km radius? That's a pretty significant amount! And good for those that would rather leave off the alcoholic fruit of the vine. One can become an expert on which place produces the best of the red, white and rose varieties, subtle differences between each thanks to soil, production and what gets added (or not) to the mix. There's an excellent red from Malmesbury, wonderful roses from Robertson and Ashton, and the best whites from ... well, a whole pile of places. Depending on whether you like them sweet or slightly dryer.

Along with the vineyards come amazing scenes in autumn as each cultivar's leaves turn a different colour before falling off the vine. Add a sprinkling of snow on the background mountains, and you have postcard-photo opps around every corner. Spring sees a flush of bright green on hills and in valleys, as the vineyards come alive again after lying dormant through the cold, wet winter. Summer - and you're likely to get stuck in a traffic jam behind tractor and trailer hauling grapes to the winery. In the middle of town.

I used to have to drive to Paarl once a week for work purposes - a smallish town an hour from here. I loved it, just because it was a road through the winelands, with their vineyards, mountains, Cape Dutch architecture and sweeping vistas right through to Table Mountain.

Simple things make me happy. Living in the Fairest Cape is one of them.