Joostenberg Deli – a stop worth making time for

Farm out­side Bloekomsbos

Saturday was a day filled with new dis­cov­er­ies and inter­est­ing stops. We vis­ited a local farmer, Erick, on his farm just out­side Bloekomsbos, acci­dent­ally dis­covered one of the Stellenbosch jew­els — Joostenberg Deli — and uncovered a gem of a garden centre just next door.

Erick Zenzele is the farmer that sends us a bag full of peas, cab­bage, mixed lettuce leaves, beet­root, broc­coli and spin­ach every week. His farm (his land has been loaned to him by a local farmer) just out­side Bellville in Cape Town is part of the local CSA (com­munity sup­por­ted agri­cul­ture) pro­ject sup­por­ted by Slow Food Cape Town together with the Sustainability Institute. A group of fam­il­ies in Cape Town help sup­port the farm­ers involved by pay­ing upfront for our bags of veg. But it's also a way of recon­nect­ing with our food. As 'con­sumers' we now know exactly where our veget­ables are grown, and after our visit on Saturday, by whom ...

After find­ing out what secret ingredi­ents he puts in a big vat of com­post tea, why he plants pan­sies with his turnips, trad­ing ideas for wind breaks, and leav­ing with a slip of an ingeni­ous little weed that Erick assured us will grow like topsy becaue it acts as a shield against the wind that rushes through his crops, we headed home imbued with the happy time we had exper­i­enced whilst Erick took us around his crops.

En route back to the N1 from the farm we drove straight past Joostenberg, and since tum­mies were rum­bling and demands for treats were issued from the back seat, we decided a slight devi­ation from the ori­ginal plan to be home in time for lunch was a good idea all round.

Garden Village

Right next door to Klein Joostenberg Deli, which is part of Joostenberg winery — a fam­ily affair but more about that later — is the van den Berg Garden Village and whole­sale nurs­ery. I men­tion it not for its array of, well, garden stuff, but also for the ori­gin­al­ity involved in the presentation.

The entrance to the centre is under a rain­bow attached to two 'Easter Island' type columns. On the rain­bow is writ­ten 'dis­cover a para­dise of col­our and fra­grance' and a little fur­ther in, a sim­ilar rain­bow invites one to 'add wealth to the earth!'. It's a sub­lime array of plants and garden paraphenalia set in amongst the trees and under can­op­ies. Part of the second rain­bow is the bid for 'paper pots', the how to's and what for's that show you how to make your own paper pots and steer away from plastic. You can also buy a wooden 'potato farm' that shows you how to grow your own organic pota­toes at home in a box.

After a quick tour of the nurs­ery (quick being the oper­at­ive word, as when my other half gets going in a nurs­ery, we not only lose hours, but half of our life sav­ings as well!) we headed into the coun­try deli and bis­tro. Even before uncov­er­ing the source of the won­der­ful deli type goods on dis­play, we got into con­ver­sa­tion with Tyrrel Myburgh about his won­der­ful wines.

Joostenberg Deli

Tyrrel has been farm­ing his vine­yards organ­ic­ally since 2005 and applied for cer­ti­fic­a­tion in 2008. The pro­cess takes three years and he was gran­ted a credit for 2007 as his soils tested favour­ably, so the wines are cur­rently organic in con­ver­sion but the 2010 har­vest will be fully organic. We sipped and dis­cussed his wines, bottled with a simple yet strik­ing label and suc­cumbed to a couple of bottles to add to our pathetic col­lec­tion at home.

The food served at Klein Joostenberg is good old fash­ioned peasant-french and is a won­der­ful spot at which to have lunch, par­tic­u­larly as there is also a play area for chil­dren. I've heard whis­pers about their chicken pie that makes the drive out here more than worth it.

Not just that, but the place has an entire butchery ded­ic­ated to pork. There are cured hams and proscuitto-style meats and deli­cious pork dishes on the menu. Whilst they're not farm­ing their pigs organ­ic­ally, they don't use routine anti­obi­ot­ics and no unnat­ural foods are fed to the pigs. The deli is said to have the best pork products in town with a fine menu of coun­try cook­ing – baguettes, home-made ice-cream, honey, jams and pre­serves, milk straight from the cows, hand­made cheeses and, yes, those incred­ible pork products.

Joostenberg Wines

Joostenberg Deli lies on Muldersvlei farm. It's been accused of 'over­deliv­er­ing on qual­ity for the price' and this is indeed the case. Over week­ends you can par­take of a two or three course meal for a more than fair price whilst junior gets to play on the jungle gym. It is run by Christophe Dehosse, the chef behind the won­der­ful meals, and his wife Susan (Tyrell's sis­ter, in case you are inter­ested). Philip and Gill Myburgh, three of their chil­dren and seven grand­chil­dren all live on Joostenberg, mak­ing it a fam­ily affair.

We depar­ted that much richer for hav­ing stumbled on yet another venue well worth dis­cov­er­ing and one to which we def­in­itely intend to return!

Address & Contact Details:
Joostenberg Farm, Muldersvlei, Western Cape
Telephone: +27 (0)21 884‑4303

Useful Links:
Western Cape Attractions
Things to Do in Western Cape
Western Cape Farm Stalls & Markets
Western Cape Accommodation