Esona Means "the very one" in Xhosa.
The Xhosa are the second largest cultural group in South Africa, after the Zulu-speaking nation. The Xhosa language (Isixhosa), of which there are variations, is part of the Nguni language group.
Esona is a boutique winery situated next to the Breede River between Robertson and Bonnivale and falls within the Robertson Wine Valley. This farm land used to be a vegetable farm before and then had 9ha of the land converted to a vineyard, where a small team hand picks the grapes.
All the farms out here are watered via Canal irrigation... as well as this one.
When you walk up to it... its not much to look at... set among vineyards that look like bush vines... has a canal running past. And then u go inside... It looks like this place used to be a barn or something.
First we go upstairs to do a quick tasting to enjoy the views, and then we go downstairs led by Hirschill the Wine tasting manager....and he takes us further down some stairs and into their unique wine tasting room.
The tasting room at first glance looks like cement bunkers but were actually made from river stone and were used to hold 45,000litres of wine. There are three off them interconnected to each other and what they did was break little doorways into them leading from one tank to the other.
There is no light in there... so they use candle light and being cement tanks, they are very cool inside... what a relief from the heat outside! .. and of course being cement so there are no sounds or smells in there.
These tanks are not very big tanks.. maybe 4x5m if that... The whole setting look like we stepped into one of those underground bassilica churches in Spain.
Then we started the wine tasting - we experienced a wine pairing of 3 wines- Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Shiraz- along with a vertical pairing of the same 3 types of wines made from grapes picked from different years... the a pairing of wine was done with fruit preserves :sweet fig preserve, orange marmalade preserve and then a prune preserve... and in between that there were pieces of a creamy milky or dark chocolate to cleanse the palates... All mild and not over powering.
But that's not all... We did the tastings in grape specific Esona branded Riedel glasses .... The wine tasting manager had 3 of the Esona glasses for each setting and then there was what he called a Joker glass placed behind the setting. The aim was to show us how a wine taste is affected by the type of wine glass... and how the shape of the glass tells you what the wine will do for you.
A joker glass is the glass of wine that most fast paced restaurant have-the short stem n chunky glasses...
Tastes were world apart!
And then... as if that was not all... We each got a certificate at the end of the tasting to say that we attended the"Taste the Difference" wine experience. Now how is that for a favorite memory piece.!!!
Hands down my highlight of the tour. I bought a very nice Shiraz 2013 from them. It will be the first Shiraz in my collection, and it will be the only Shiraz in the world of its kind, since every bottle has a unique wine label.
But dont take my word for it- let me take you there to experience it for yourself.