#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...

[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.

[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.

[letmeoutofthebasementt]

Would SKZ date a foreigner? MTL

Most

Chan

Changbin

Jeongin

Felix

Seungmin

Hyunjin

Lee Know

Han

Least

Bangchan

He would. He probably has, and will continue to in the future. He finds a sense of fulfillment in these relationships. Like he probably dates Aussie girls a lot because they remind him of home. If they’re from far away he has this mentality of “Oh, you traveled all this way and your journeys ended with an amazing new relationship” towards them or something.

Changbin

Definitely. Like Chan, he probably prefers them. I think he thinks of it as an achievement? Because he has to work in those relationships, and they’re fulfilling. He feels like they both have to make that effort and have that sort of ambition to get there, and learn about each other’s cultures, languages, etc. it’s a sign of love. He likes dating foreigners also because they don’t know him as ‘Changbin of Stray Kids’, but as this foreign Korean dude they met. (Though I would say there is that aspect of wishing that they did know and appreciate his art if they didn’t.)

Jeongin

He would. He thinks there’s potential and he may get lucky. I’m getting a lot of…Finance indicators here. I’m gonna be so for real, he probably dates old white sugar mommies. Or daddies. Whichever way he swings. Said what I said. I’m also getting that…He loves the money. He’s young, and sure he’s rich but who doesn’t want to be wined, dined, and pampered? He’s not big on relationships or commitment as a general rule of thumb since he’s busy and working and just living his life and young. But if he does date someone? Might as well get something out of it.

Felix

Felix has no real preference. Though this may be because his terms of…What’s foreign and what’s not are broader? Is something foreign when the cultures are different? Is it foreign when the countries are different? Is a foreigner someone who’s not Australian or someone who’s not Korean? There’s a lot of gray area. But generally he doesn’t care where you are. If you can communicate, have things you have in common, and can compromise then hes okay with whatever. Cambodian, Indian, South African, American, Indonesian, whatever it is. As long as their minds and hearts are in the same place.

Seungmin

He doesn’t really seem to care. As long as they have that depth and emotional security he’s looking for, it’s whatever. I’m getting a direct message of “As long as I can be happy with them without sacrificing myself.” So essentially, he truly and honestly doesn’t care as long as they’re happy together.

Hyunjin

No. I think, practically, he would, he has, and he does. He enjoys learning about cultures and traditions and languages. Foreign partners are the perfect way to mix what he loves most. (This part made me giggle but I’m free styling this shit) Love, sex, and learning. It’s a win win win. Like that one conversation he had with Seungmin. With that being said, back to the no aspect of the tarot. His most recent ex was probably foreign. And that was DISASTROUS. I’m talking hopelessly, everything destroyed, life and mental health in shambles (I keep getting a lot of scratching images? Like scratched up clothes, scratched up skin, scratched up wallpaper. As well as just broken furniture. Possibly physically abusive but that’s just me speculating) so much so he probably threw the entire country they’re from away. “Never stepping foot there again” type shit. So, in normal circumstances he would, but the ex probably used cultural differences as a crutch. Like, “No, this isn’t abuse. This is normal in my culture. It’s showing how much I love you.” And Hyunjin loves love, but not that type of love. But poor little Hyunjin believed it and now he’s scared. I put him in the lower middle because he WOULD under normal circumstances but these AREN’T normal circumstances.

Lee Know

Honestly, I don’t think he would. He’s tried, but it hasn’t worked out. There’s cultural differences, language differences, etc. and there’s also just conflicting values, upbringings, etc. he finds a hard time connecting on those deeper levels because they lack a lot of shared experiences they would’ve otherwise had, even down to cuisine. He steers clear of dating foreigners.

Han

Another no. Another who has and didn’t like the experience. Honestly this might’ve been because of in-laws. The cultural differences stressed him out and I think he’s said he has social anxiety before anyways? Correct me if I’m wrong but I heard it somewhere. Can’t remember there. But he gets really restless and feels like his skin is peeling and crawling and wants to fucking die when he has to meet the in laws. He doesn’t know what to wear, how to act, what to bring, what to do, how to talk (If he even knows the language). It just stressed him out. And honestly, it’s probably the same vice versa. Also, he might’ve dated an American. And American girls are much more…Open with the opposite sex than Korean girls are. And because of that it stressed him out because he got insecure and over thought everything but also didn’t want to be overbearing because he knew it was a cultural thing. So…

[cazzyf1]

Some James Hunt lore ✨️

Because man needs to be appreciated

Warning, potential nsfw and other triggering topics under the cut

James Hunt brought a v*brator to a Mclaren mechanic asking if he could fix it.

James Hunt supporting black-led groups in South Africa when trying to gain their independence. He didn't want to commentate the South African GP because of what was happening but the BBC forced him to. So he purposely revealed during the race that him and Murry Walker were not actually in South Africa commentating (which was not known to the public at the time). He also donated all the money he got from commentating the South African GP to charities to support the apartheid's even though at the time he was struggling for money

James Hunt learnt to play the trumpet at school and was rather good at it. He got to play at the Royal Albert Hall and everyone was suprised when he played well and got invited back to perform at another show.

At school he made his younger brother a pair of pj trousers and his brother proudly wore them around. James loved his younger siblings dearly.

James studied the female anatomy to understand and help his girlfriend at the time who kept having miscarriages.

Niki had to convince German guards not to arrest James when he tried breaking back into the track after a night out.

James having to convince airport customs to let him bring a playboy magazine through because it had an interview piece with him in.

James would throw up before races and Niki sometimes would piss beside him.

After retiring from F1 James brought a farm however he couldn't kill any of the animals so it fell through. His son, Freddie, now owns a sustainable farm in Scotland.

James loved the game backgammon and made everyone play it with him.

James sent Niki a telegram after his crash trying to motivate him to get better. Niki called James up on his birthday from hospital and they chatted for hours.

James owned a nightclub called 'Oscars' named after his dog.

James Hunt slept with a journalist then got upset when she rated him in a newspaper article.

James seized the PA system from a flight attendant and gave his own version of the welcoming address as they landed. Later on he appeared sitting on luggage riding the carousel.

One day during practise James felt tired and halfway through he pulled the car over and fell asleep. Niki who was sitting out watching James practise panicked when James didn't return and jumped on an ambulance that rushed around to find James, only to find him asleep in his car.

James went to therapy and concluded that he struggled with emotional intimacy with women likely down to the lack of emotional availability in his childhood.

Once, while being interviewed, James pointed to his hotel room and him and the interviewer watched as a woman broke into his hotel room.

James was happy when Suzy left him for Richard Burton as he felt responsible for her even though their relationship had fallen apart.

James was given a toy monkey after winning the championship and carried it everywhere.

He would refuse to wear suits to formal events, preferring to wear jeans and no shoes.

In his early days he tried to enter a mini car he had made with missing doors and a garden chair in the passenger seat.

Once James was stuck in the back of a car in traffic and he needed to go to the toilet. His then girlfriend suggested he piss out the window as the car tried to rush past all the traffic but as it was so cold his c*ck wouldn't work so he was just accidentally flashing everyone as the car rushed by.

After winning the world championship, Britian hosted a 'James Hunt' day. Niki went along to wave a flag for one of the races.

One of the first times James Hunt and Murry Walker worked together, James leg was in a cast, and he sat down and put his leg on Murray's lap which really annoyed Murray. He also drank two bottles of rose wine during that commentary session.

James was utterly dedicated to his dog Oscar to the point that they were inseparable.

James said that what brought him pleasure in the bedroom is the woman feeling pleasure and that he liked a woman who knew what she wanted and told him

He became very depressed and would call the bad days his 'dippers'

He struggled with a lot of addictions but got sober for his sons

[fatehbaz]

Americans [...] would sip the rich cocoa as a hot drink. Cocoa made its way to North America on the same ships that transported rum and sugar from the Caribbean and South America [...] and was heavily reliant on the labor of enslaved Africans throughout the diaspora. [...] [B]y the early 1700s, Boston, Newport, New York and Philadelphia were processing cocoa into chocolate to export and to sell domestically. Chocolate was popular in the coffeehouse culture and was processed for sale and consumption by enslaved laborers in the North. Farther south, in Virginia, cocoa was becoming [...] so popular that it is estimated that approximately one-third of Virginia’s elite was consuming cocoa in some form or another. For the wealthy, this treat was sipped multiple times a week; for others it was out of reach. [...]

The art of chocolate-making – roasting beans, grinding pods onto a stone over a small flame – was a labor-intensive task. An enslaved cook would have had to roast the cocoa beans on the open hearth, shell them by hand, grind the nibs on a heated chocolate stone, and then scrape the raw cocoa, add milk or water, cinnamon, nutmeg or vanilla, and serve it piping hot.

---

One of the first chocolatiers in the Colonies was an enslaved cook named Caesar.

Born in 1732, Caesar was the chef at Stratford Hall, the home of the Lees of Virginia, and in his kitchen sat one of only three chocolate stones in the Colony. The other two were located at the governor’s palace and at the Carter family estate, belonging to one of the wealthiest families in Virginia. Caesar was responsible for cooking multiple meals a day for the Lees and any free person who came to visit. [...]

---

The work was oppressive in the plantation kitchens at Christmas time. [...]

[T]hose working in the big house kitchen and as domestic laborers were expected to work around the clock to ensure a perfect holiday for the white family. The biggest task at hand was to cook and serve Christmas dinner, and chocolate was a favorite addition to the three-course formal dinner. [...] Oyster stew, meat pies, roasted pheasant, puddings, roasted suckling pig and Virginia ham are some of the many dishes that would be served in just one course. The night would finish with the sipping of chocolate: toasted, ground and spiced [...] and served in sipping-cups made specifically for drinking chocolate. [...]

---

Decades before the two well-known enslaved chefs, Monticello’s James Hemings and George Washington’s Chef Hercules, [...] Caesar was running one of the Colonies’ most prestigious kitchens inside of Stratford Hall, and making chocolate for the Lees and their guests. [...] [H]is son, Caesar Jr., lived nearby and was the postillion [...].

The stress of cooking the most important dinner of the year was combined with the fear of what was to come on Jan. 1. New Year’s Day was commonly known as heartbreak day, when enslaved folks would be sold to pay off debts or rented out to a different plantation. Jan. 1 represented an impending doom, and the separation of families and loved ones. [...] Caesar disappeared from the records by the end of the 18th century. By 1800, his son Caesar Jr. was still owned by the Lees, but as that year ended, Christmas came and went, and Caesar Jr. was put up for collateral by Henry Lee for payment of his debts.

---

The world Caesar lived in was one fueled by the Columbian Exchange, which was built from enslaved labor [...]: pineapples, Madeira wine, port, champagne, coffee, sugar and cocoa beans. These items traveled from plantation to dining room via the Atlantic trade, and were central to securing the reputation of Virginia’s plantation elite. The more exotic and delicious the food, the more domestic fame one would reap. Having cocoa delivered directly to your home, and having a chocolatier in the kitchen, were exceptional. It was through Caesar’s culinary arts that Stratford Hall became well-known throughout Colonial Virginia as a culinary destination.

---

All text above by: Kelley Fanto Deetz. “Oppression in the kitchen, delight in the dining room: The story of Caesar, an enslaved chef and chocolatier in Colonial Virginia.” The Conversation. 21 December 2020. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[lost-lycaon]

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