Do you ever read "The Back Page" on the wine bottle? When thinking about the back label, ones mind immediately visualises the usual suspects: warnings, bar code and ALC. 14% BY VOL. If you are lucky some give you a splurge of the blend that is contained within. But then, on a select few, you get given a glimpse of the wines soul.
Take a bottle of Fryers Cove, Bamboes Bay....
From the front this appears to be just a regular bottle of wine, to many a good sauvignon blanc, but in fact so much more.
Read the back page of this bottle and you are tantalized by several "bits and bobs", that very nearly transport you to its very origin.
This is Doringbaai some 360 km up the West Coast from Cape Town and on the back page of this bottle when they say, "vines planted 850m from the see and 20m above sea level", they really do mean it. If fact, no need to float wine bottles in the bay here. In this harbour cellar the cooling process is done full time by water from the cold Atlantic Ocean.
That all being said, whilst these vines may be "forged of the earth & tempered by the sea", they are handled by some of the most hospitable people I have met. My visit to Fryers Cove, I will never forget ....
