Drunk!

Ye gods – what a change! That was my first thought as we drew up to Warwick Wine estate this Sunday to try their new picnics. The last time I came to the estate, our car bottomed out the whole way down their drive (yes, I know, we need to go on diets) so the smoothing down of some of the savage speed bumps was the first huge improvement we noticed, swiftly followed by an immense area of open space with wonderful views down over the dam and the valley beyond. This Sunday was the ‘soft opening’ for friends and family and there is still some work to be done, but what was there looked lovely.

Warwick have decided to go big or go home here with fairly ambitious building plans and quite a chunk of change being spent to make them happen. I love going to places where the plans have been drawn up with kids in mind – you can certainly tell that owners Mike and Pip Ratcliffe have young kids because the jungle gyms were cool and fun and the kids’ picnic was the perfect blend of what kids actually want to eat (viennas with dipping sauce and marshmallows) and what parents would rather they ate (cheese and ham sarmie, apple and healthy oil-free chips). There were changing facilities in the loos and outside, a long fountain and waterway was doubling up as a rather dubiously dirty paddling pool for scores of happy little naked people.

But Rugrats aren’t a compulsory accessory and if you wanted to spend the afternoon lounging against the large brightly coloured sausage-shaped cushions, sipping Sauvignon and gazing into your lover’s eyes, then that would be cool too. Apparently they have a whole weekend of lurve planned for the 13^th/14^th Feb including a shipment of pink reclining sausages to set the mood – just hope they don’t give anybody too big an inferiority complex!

The only slight down of the day was how long the food took to arrive. We were welcomed and taken through our winetasting by our ‘wine advisor’ Bridgette who was lovely, and who clearly knew her stuff. Our food was – eventually – brought by Demitri who was our ‘picnic advisor’ and I think that the delay was probably caused by a lack of communication between the two and no overseeing manager to bridge the gap.  But hey, she was friendly, he was smiley, the day was sunny, our table was shady and when we had a gentle grumble about the food taking too long, a placatory bottle of wine appeared on our table within seconds, so did we care that much about the wait? Well, frankly, no, and anyway, when it arrived, the food (under the aegis of celeb chef Bruce Robertson) was probably the best and most plentiful I’ve had in a picnic basket this season – delicious mustardy potato salad, very nice bread and hummus, yummy biltong pate and a meltingly gorgeous chocolate brownie were the stars for me.

In our restaurant days, as owners of The Nose, somebody once said that we were ‘chaotic but forgivable’ and since they proceeded to return twice a week for 6 years, I took that as a compliment. I think the same could be said of our experience this Sunday at Warwick, but I rather think it won’t take them 6 years to sort out their small service glitches and offer one of the most pleasant afternoons around – in fact, I give them 6 days and I bet things will be different. Not sure I can make it out there twice a week, but hell, I’m willing to give it a go!