Wine, Dinning and Art – This is Rustenburg

There are some places you go to and a couple of things arrest you – the architecture, culture, weather and the general life of the people.
This is the story of Rustenburg, a city situated in at the foot of the Magaliesberg mountain range in North West Province of South Africa.
It was one of the official host cities of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, being in close proximity to Phokeng, capital of the Royal Bafokeng Nation, where the Royal Bafokeng Stadium is located. The England national football team also used this as their base camp for the tournament.
Tsup Ug alongside an African contingent of reporters from DRC, Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana and Uganda toured the city with a bias of the Rustenburg Wines’ fields owned by the Barlow family, one of South Africa’s oldest wine making families.
Having acquired the farms in 1941, the family boosts of over ten dry wine brands and are still innovating.

According to Simon Barlow, the son of Peter and Pamela Barlow, that acquired Rosenburg in 1941, keeping the fields running for all the years has been a mixture of hardwork and unity – for instance, he grew up with some of his now employees and to them the fields are like family.
He also revealed that the field also attracts at least 1800 tourists annually.
Besides the wine, the architect too is eye popping – maintaining a grass thatch as well as a green collage that Simon notes dates back from the days of the farm’s first owners.
During the wine tasting, Tsup Ug learnt that some wine is woody, while the other is hard, smooth or how some types of wine are a total No No for a meat sticks combo.

Of course these are things that your perennial Blackets & Wine reveler has no idea of; wine is an expression for the makers – it’s taste, tells the type of soil, weather and the altitudes it was grown.
Of course it was great knowing that red grapes produce white wine, - who could have imagined?
The winner though should be the art around the city, its strategically located near the Cape Town Film Studio which will always greet you with those pirate ships visible from yards away across the road, then the art expressions around Stellenbosch are too amazing – in a snap Rosenburg is everything a Ugandan art buff can dream of, good art, wine, film and fine food.