#South African Wine

[sohannabarberaesque]

On another half-baked espionage assignment for Secret Squirrel and Morocco Mole

[Mise en scene: The liquor section of some airport duty-free shop, where Morocco Mole finds something unusual among brandies--a water-clear such] MOROCCO MOLE, ever the fascinated one when it comes to the old exotic booze: Uh ... I always thought brandy was supposed to be a sort of tawny brown, but for some reason, this South African brandy is water-clear. Makes you wonder whether such would taste different.... SECRET SQUIRREL, looking at the bottle: You mean this Paarl Rock brandy? Morocco, I thought apartheid made South African wine rather unfashionable, but with apartheid's collapse, I have to wonder how a Wisconsin-type Old Fashioned might taste with Paarl Rock, to begin with. MOROCCO MOLE: And I wonder if the angels must be sighing at the sight and taste of such clear brandy, to be exact. Remember Crystal Pepsi? SECRET SQUIRREL: Correct me if I'm wrong, but yes, Morocco, I do recall Crystal Pepsi. [Pause] And isn't it true that Paarl is close to Cape Town?

[hey-its-sybarite]

Your STUNNING Destination Wedding on a South African Slave-Worked Vineyard

AKA THIS HAPPENS HERE TOO

The Western Cape was the only region in South Africa that had enslaved people shipped in (from the Dutch East) auctioned, bought for plantation work. The enslaved people worked the huge picturesque vineyards and fruit farms of the region. The wineries are still there, people love holidaying at them, getting married at them.

The group of folks descended from the slaves still have massive socio economic set backs, the poorest indicators of any demographic in the country in certain areas (health, education, employment). One of the ways they were enslaved was through a system of addiction (called the Dop or Tot system), where they were fed alcohol rations every work day. The children of the enslaved people also began working very very young and were also fed alcohol rations. To this day, this population has one of the highest rates of fetal (foetal) alcohol syndrome (FAS/FASD) in the world.

One of the vineyards forces you to hear about the enslaved population who worked it. You go for a wine tasting and they have a descendent from that very population talk you through your wines and your history, it also has a free museum dedicated to their lives and work, and splits its profits to go to a fund for supporting the population breaking the cycle of poverty. Despite being a small label, it persuaded (and shamed?) other wineries into contributing to the fund. But yeah, a lot of people don’t like showing up for a wine tasting only to have it come with an info session on slavery in the wine region. That little winery has just been bought by some Americans but they seem dedicated to keeping the community enrichment and museum going. At least, they’re saying the right things, for now. I am hopeful.

But yeah, white South Africans and white foreigners looooove getting hitched at these sites of incredible human misery and subjugation. To be fair, this is not super common information in South Africa, especially outside of the region. I hope that many of the people simply don’t know that these places were, essentially, slave plantations.

Quick basic links:

btw its actually crazy that plantation tours are a thing that exist in the u.s. and that theyre not all set up like memorials similar to concentration camp museums like how is this marketed as a chill tourist activity or wedding destination and not extremely disturbing and depressing to see. worthless country

[jamesthewineguy]

Lievland Central Region Bushvine Pinotage '19 90 Points #southafricanwin...

[jozistyle]

Indaba

The Indaba Hotel invited me to a wine pairing they hosted in partnership with Leeuwenkuil Family Vineyards to experience a taste of the Swartland. Firstly, they served the food in poitjies – so it was literally #DinePotjieStyle! Our first course was a combination of two different potjies: a creamy mushroom pasta and a spicy seafood tomato-based pasta. I��m just assuming that we were allowed to…

[andre64]

𝗕𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗯𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝘀 𝗕𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗵 𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻𝘀 𝟯𝟬

[wine-porn]

Rubicon: Southern Exposure

What a difference a __________ makes! Same producer, same year, same bottle, different cork, same-ish varieties, same ABV, the RED a miserable swill of brown, maderized road-tar, the RUBICON stunning in ways California doesn’t quite do and Australia doesn’t quite do and Chile doesn’t quite do–though there are nods to all. Blind, I’d probably go with Australia, as there’s no doubting that…

[lost-lycaon]

From Babylonstoren Wine Estate, Western Cape, South Africa.

[matovugodfreymg]

*🌍 A҉F҉R҉I҉C҉A҉*

Kenya's 🇰🇪 Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, now impeached, says he never imagined "Ruto could be that vicious, especially after I helped him become president" while warning that "if anything happens to me or my family, Ruto should be held accountable."

"It's unfortunate that while I was in the hospital, my brother and friend, William Ruto, ordered the withdrawal of my security detail.

I no longer have any officers assigned to protect me. I never imagined Ruto could be that vicious, especially after I helped him become president. As of today, the Deputy President of Kenya has no security. If anything happens to me or my family, Ruto should be held accountable.

Ruto, my brother, I helped you to be president. Leave me alone. Leave my children alone. Do whatever you want but let me live. Let me look after my children."

*Source* : *@𝑴𝒈* 💕🕊️

*#A҉F҉R҉I҉C҉A҉_U҉N҉I҉T҉E҉D҉* 🌍

*𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭𝓹𝓮𝓸𝓹𝓵𝓮𝓸𝓯𝓪𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓬𝓪.𝓸𝓻𝓰*

☕︎☕︎☕︎

[what-she-likes]

[jeonghanurl]

haven't thought about the sims in months but I just heard of the new sims expansion and it will have a dating app and ability to scan the room for singles, I am so ready, keeping the family tree alive is gonna be so much easier, if this pack isn't glitchy like all other packs I looked forward to I might become a sims-nerd again in august

[finewinelibrary]

Indulge in the Luxurious Henschke Hill of Grace with Fine Wine Library

Fine wine is not just a beverage; it’s a journey toward perfection. And when it comes to perfection, Henschke Hill of Grace is undoubtedly the holy grail of fine wines. This complex and rich wine is a treasure that every wine enthusiast and collector desires to have. In this article, we will embark on a journey to unlock the secrets of Henschke Hill wine and reveal why Fine Wine Library is the ultimate destination for wine lovers.

[blueiscoool]

How Hadrian’s Wall is Revealing a Hidden Side of Roman History

A party invitation. A broken flipflop. A wig. Letters of complaint about road conditions, and an urgent request for more beer.

It sounds like the aftermath of a successful spring break, but these items are nearly 2,000 years old.

They’re just some of the finds from Hadrian’s Wall – the 73-mile stone wall built as the northwestern boundary of the Roman Empire, sealing off Britannia (modern-day England and Wales) from Caledonia (essentially today’s Scotland).

While most of us think of Pompeii and Herculaneum if we’re thinking of everyday objects preserved from ancient Rome, this outpost in the wild north of the empire is home to some of the most extraordinary finds.

“It’s a very dramatic stamp on the countryside – there’s nothing more redolent of saying you’re entering the Roman empire than seeing that structure,” says Richard Abdy, lead curator of the British Museum’s current exhibition, Legion, which spotlights the everyday life of Roman soldiers, showcasing many finds from Hadrian’s Wall in the process. A tenth of the Roman army was based in Britain, and that makes the wall a great source of military material, he says.

But it’s not all about the soldiers, as excavations are showing.

A multicultural melting pot

Hadrian, who ordered the wall to be built in 122CE after a visit to Britannia, had a different vision of empire than his predecessors, says Frances McIntosh, curator for English Heritage’s 34 sites along Hadrian’s Wall.

“All the emperors before him were about expanding the empire, but Hadrian was known as the consolidator,” she says. He relinquished some of the territory acquired by his predecessor Trajan, and “decided to set the borders” – literally, in some cases, with wooden poles at sites in Germany, or with stone in Britannia. Where those poles rotted thousands of years ago, the wall is still standing: “A great visual reminder” of the Roman empire, says McIntosh.

It’s not just a wall. There’s a castle every mile along, and turrets at every third-of-a-mile point, with ditches and banks both north and south. “You can imagine the kind of impact that would have had, not just on the landscape but on the people living in the area,” says McIntosh.

And thanks to the finds from the wall, we know a surprising amount about those people.

Although historians have long thought of army outposts as remote, male-dominant places, the excavations along the wall show that’s not the case. Not only were soldiers accompanied by their families, but civilians would settle around the settlements to do business. “ You can almost see Housesteads as a garrison town,” says McIntosh. “There were places you could go for a drink and so on.”

The Roman rule of thumb was not to post soldiers in the place they came from, because of the risk of rebellion. That meant Hadrian’s Wall was a cultural melting point, with cohorts from modern-day Netherlands, Spain, Romania, Algeria, Iraq, Syria – and more. “It was possibly more multicultural because it was a focus point,” says McIntosh, who says that the surrounding community might have included traders from across the empire.

Soldiers were split into two groups. Legionaries were Roman citizens from Italy, who had more rights than other soldiers and imported olive oil, wine and garum (a sauce made from decomposing fish).

They worked alongside auxiliaries – soldiers from conquered provinces, who had fewer rights, but could usually acquire citizenship after 25 years of service.

Soldiers carved their names and regiments on stones to show which part of the wall they built – around 50 of them are on display at Chesters fort.

But the wall shows that women and children were equally present.

McIntosh says that pottery brought to the camps – from the Low Countries and North Africa – shows that the soldiers “brought their families, who cooked in traditional style.” Archaeologists have found what seems to be an ancient tagine for North African-style cooking.

A tombstone from Arbeia fort for a woman named Regina shows she was a freed slave from southern Britain who was bought by – and married to – a Syrian soldier.

Another woman buried at Birdoswald fort was laid to rest with chainmail that appears to be from modern-day Poland. “Perhaps she married someone in the army,” says McIntosh, who calls the wall a “melting pot of people from all over the world under the banner of the army.”

“They brought their own religions, as well as worshipping Roman gods and adopting local deities,” she adds. At Carrawburgh, a temple to Mithras – an originally Persian deity – sat near a spring with a shrine to a local water spirit.

‘Wretched little Brits’

Some of the most extraordinary finds from the Roman empire are coming from one site on Hadrian’s Wall: Vindolanda. Here, archaeologists have found a wealth of organic remains because of what curator Barbara Birley calls the “unusual conditions onsite.”

At Vindolanda there are the remains of at least nine forts over 14 levels. “When the Romans would leave, they would knock down timber forts, and cover the area with turf and clay, sealing the layers underneath,” she says.

“Because it happened so many times, the bottom five or six layers are sealed in anaerobic conditions, so things don’t decay. When we get down there, we get wooden objects, textiles, anything organic.”

Vindolanda has the largest collection of Roman textiles from a single site in western Europe, as well as the largest leather collection of any site in the Roman empire – including 5,000 shoes, and even a broken leather flip-flop. “We probably had a population of 3,000 to 6,000 depending on the period, so 5,000 is a lot,” says Birley. For Abdy, the shoes evoke the conditions of the wet borderlands. “Women’s and children’s shoes are hobnailed – you needed it in the mucky frontier dirt tracks. They’re very evocative.”

There’s even a wig made from a local plant, hair moss, which is said to repel midges – the scourge of Scotland during the summer. A centurion’s helmet is also crested with hairmoss – the ancient equivalent of spraying yourself with insect repellent.

The first woman to write in Latin

One of the most famous finds is the trove of wooden writing tablets – the largest found anywhere.

“They give a snapshot of what life was actually like,” says Birley. “We understand so much more from written correspondence than from ‘stuff,’ and, archaeologically, it’s the stuff that usually survives – things like metals and ceramics.

“These were written in ink, not on a wax stylus tablet, and we believe they were used for what we’d put in emails: ‘The roads are awful,’ ‘The soldiers need more beer.’ Everyday business.”

The tablets – or “personal letters” as Birley describes them – were found on the site of a bonfire when the ninth cohort of Batavians (in the modern-day Netherlands) were told to move on.

“They had a huge bonfire and lots of letters were chucked in the fire. Some have been singed – we think it may have rained,” she says. One of them calls the locals “Britunculi” – “wretched little Brits.” Another talks about an outbreak of pinkeye. One claims that the roads are too bad to send wagons; another laments that the soldiers have run out of beer.

Among the 1,700 letters are 20 that mention a woman called Sulpicia Lepidina. She was the wife of the commander of the garrison, and seems to have played a crucial role. There’s a letter to her from another woman, Paterna, agreeing to send her two medicines, one a fever cure.

Birley says it’s similar to today. “If you’re a group of moms, still today we say, ‘Do you have the Calpol?’ It’s very human.” For Abdy, it’s a sign that women were traders. “She’s clearly flogging her medicines,” he says. “It’s really great stuff.”

Another tablet is an invite from Claudia Severa, the wife of another commander at a nearby camp. It’s an invitation to a birthday party. Under the formal invitation, presumably written by a scribe, is a scrawl in another hand: “I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul.”

Presumably written by Claudia herself, it is thought to be the earliest example of a woman’s handwriting in Latin.

Without the organic finds – the shoes and the letters that indisputably belonged to women, unlike jewellery or weaving equipment – it’s difficult to prove conclusively that women lived in significant numbers. Vindolanda “illustrate the missing gaps,” says Abdy. For Birley, they prove that women were as crucial a part of army communities as men. “Before the Lepidina tablets were found we didn’t really understand the interactions between the soldiers and their wives,” she says. Another tablet is written by what is thought to be a Spanish standard-bearer’s common-law wife, ordering military equipment for her partner.

“The Vindolanda collection is showing that there weren’t just camp followers and prostitutes; women were part of everyday life, and contributing to the military community in many ways,” says Birley.

Abdy says that Hadrian’s Wall is interesting because the resident women span “all classes of society,” from Regina – the dead freedwoman, who would have been “bottom of the heap” – to the trader Paterna and the noblewoman Lepidina.

And of course, there’s the wall itself.

“In the Netherlands and Germany the finds are often stunning and better preserved – you go to museums and are bowled over. But in terms of structural remains, Hadrian’s Wall must be among the best,” says McIntosh, modestly, of her site.

Abdy agrees: “I can’t think of many symbols so redolent of imperial will than that wall.”

By Julia Buckley.

[fatherlandcarolina]

Fatherland in South Carolina - Protect African Art and Culture

Fatherland creating global economic opportunities for the African and African Descendants, yielding significant revenue for the governments via tax payments from the enterprises, tourists, residents, and employees. To promote and protect African Art, Culture, Faith, Tourism, and Tradition around the World.

[andre64]

Sauvignon Blanc

SOUTH AFRICA PLAYS HOSTMedia Release Entries for the highly anticipated Concours Mondial du Sauvignon are open.  If you are serious about Sauvignon Blanc, this is your chance to measure your wine against around 1 000 other Sauvignon Blanc wines around the word – and for the first time ever, the competition will take place on home soil in 2023. SOUTH AFRICA PLAYS HOST The judging panel of the…

[whiteboi-inferiority]

@incognitoelizabeth

Kitten. Cutie patootie. An angel with DSLs.

This south african sweetheart is a girl of many talents and one driving urge: this girl lives to please. Whether it's with her singing, her producing, her captioning or her flirting, she longs to be a good girl for those she identifies as her betters. (Don't get it twisted tumblr doms; that ain't you). Lizzie here currently holds the title of cutest approach I've ever received, and I've been around a long time (yes thank you @sissyloren, 'a long time') (yes 'a loooong time', @cutieecassie) (yes a 'super long time' @sissykyliecakes thank you ladies the point is made and we are moving on now)

Her aesthetic is a little bit soft girl, a little bit egirl, a little bit catgirl. Kitten ears, tiaras, hairclips feature. She favours earth tones and silver accessories. Mary-janes and strawberry daiquiris with her girls, high heels and white wine for dates with men. If you ever lose Lizzie, look for her at the mall or the recording studio. She is a curious kitten, with wide open eyes and heart. She would dearly love to travel, with that special someone.

Maintaining her vulnerability and optimism is an act of quiet defiance. It is a conscious choice to continue to see the best in people, to continue to remain open and soft and kind in the modern world. As with most things, Lizzie accomplishes this with a mixture of quiet excellence and girlish exuberance.

Lizzie is about mutual appreciation, authenticity and acceptance, in all things. She is finds peace in harmony. So, of course, she has blossomed with her sisters and with her big sister @karlie-xox in particular with whom she is especially close.

She likes boys. She loves black Daddies who will accept her as seen, play with her, and lead her, kindly but firmly by hand and by leash (even angels have appetites...) But she adores girls and being a girl. Like @bambimandi and so many others in @queendestiny6912 's harem - being girls together with her sisters, under their matriarch, is everything; A source of pride, a place to be creative and silly and fun, a place of wickedness, wanton harlotry and mutual masturbation, a place of healing, validation and support.

A wonderful girl in a wonderful place.

[lost-lycaon]

From the gardens of Babylonstoren wine farm. A dizzying array of flowers, fynbos, succulents, and indigenous plants like the Quiver Tree Aloe.