I went to visit Strandveld Vineyards, the most southerly production in the whole of Africa – it is only seven miles further south to the Cape of Good Hope Two thousand acres of windswept, rolling land are, shall we say, somewhat isolated, but winemaker and philosopher Conrad Vlok and his family just love living here (they are all outdoor people, fortunately). Conrad shares his passion for life, for nature, the soil and the food and drink he produces. Actually, he says, Strandveld is not only the wine, it is the terroir, a word he uses often. He has laid out a giant circle of the four different soils of the area, sandstone, quartz, iron and fossilised iron (see photo).

150 acres of the whole, set at 180-300 feet above sea level, are planted, with Grenache, Mouvedre, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon and Shiraz. Rows of vines are flanked by canola straw, for mulch, or wild mustard, to divert creepy-crawlies that might otherwise be tempted by the vines that already battle prevailing winds and a sometimes harsh climate. About 300 tons of grapes are hand-picked, in February. Stainless steel tanks and 25,000 French-oak casks are stored in a 13,500 sq ft winery, and 40% of the output will be exported.

There are two main labels, www.strandveld.co.za. The foundation label First Sighting is named for explorer Bartolomeu Dias’ 1488 sight of land, and the premium Strandveld label refers to the coastal belt around the Cape (some Strandveld wines are named Anders Sparrman, for explorer and naturalist Anders Erikson Sparrman, 1748-1820). The most expensive wine we tasted, retailing for about 140 Rand, was the Strandveld Syrah 2008, a blend of year old vines, 95% Shiraz, 3% Viognier, 1.5% Grenache, 0.5% Mourvèdre. Picked grapes were left to cold-soak for 48 hours and, after fermentation, there was 18 months’ barrel-maturation before bottling on December 2nd, 2009. With an alcohol content of 13.7%, the wine has a nose of cloves, cracked black pepper and spicy aromas, layered with intense blackberry flavor. Vlok would pair this with roast beef, duck or venison.

I was with one of Strandveld’s seven owners, Robert Appelbaum, and his fiancée, the equally-fascinating Marina Coleman, teenage psychologist and author of the graphic book HIV & Aids, which has so far sold 115,000 copies worldwide www.marinacoleman.com. After a fabulous few hours of viewing, learning and tasting, it was time to head on, sadly….

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Helicoptering in to the rooftop of Tivoli Sao Paulo – Moffarej, Sao Paulo, Brazil, is the ultimate arrival for any gal (or guy).

Flying in to São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport can be pretty chaotic as many flights arrive simultaneously, and Brazilians returning from shopping trips to New York, or elsewhere in the USA, usually have, well, lots of enormous checked bags. As always (thanks to my divine Porsche-labelled Rimowa wheelie) handbaggage. Patrick, my travel companion, and I were met right at the British Airways’ door, and VIP-ed through immigration and customs, and driven about a mile to the waiting helicopter. And where it would have taken at least 90 minutes to drive into town, a mere ten minutes later we landed on the top of the 23-floor, 220-room, Tivoli Sao Paulo – Moffarej, where two senior staff members awaited, one to guide Patrick to his room, and one to guide me. After an overnight flight from London, the first thing I needed was a workout and shower, and then I looked around my new home (wow, two nights here, what a treat!).

Is Tivoli the only hotel group named after a theatre, I wonder? The company’s fabulously charming CEO, Alexandre Solleiro (that is him, wearing his Brasil football shirt, but that is another story), says the company’s first hotel was indeed named for the theater across the street, on Lisbon’s Avenida da Liberdade. Tivoli took over this Sao Paulo building in 2009 after a complete re-do. Bedroom 1611, about 550 sq ft, looks out over the surrounding Jardim Paulista area. It is somewhat Italian in design, sleek taupe and mole colours, and the television on a ceiling-high metal rod. The oh-so-comfortable king size bed, a company standard, faces a big white orchid plant, and the wall of windows that open: the low bedhead wall forms the back of the ten-foot long desk-table, to the right of which I have a glass-fronted minibar and a Nespresso machine. There was lots of eating-and-drinking during my stay (I was in town for a gathering of Global Hotel Alliance CEOs, meeting here, but that is yet another story… watch this space). Breakfast both mornings was a magnificent fresh-healthy buffet in Bistro Tivoli. I am only sorry not to have been able to dine in Arole Vintetres, run by Sergi Arola, best-known for his two-star Michelin La Broche, in Madrid – he also oversees restaurants in Hotel Arts, Barcelona, Spain, and Ritz-Carlton Santiago, in Chile). My room service lunch, customised from the main menu, was exact, and tasty, and came with more orchids and a big smile.

Thank goodness there was time to visit the Banyan Tree spa, an Asian haven of dark colors and bamboo trees. Therapist Lucy, from Phuket, was memorably proficient. Lovely. There was also time for a couple of stints in the really-serious gym, K@2 (Cybex) and running in the park a block away. Next visit, I promise to try the outside-terrace oval swimming pool, surrounded by Moet-logo cabanas, and to venture out to nearby retail.

Well here you have’em, esteemed members of the Club des Chefs des Chefs in front of Orient-Express’ Grand Hotel Europe, St Petersburg, during their Russian gathering, 25-27 July, 2011. No, I was not with them this year – I was flying to Sao Paulo, Brazil, but that is another story (I have been with the Club at previous annual events on the Great Wall of China and in Malta). The Club was founded in 1977 by Gilles Bragard, supplier of chefs’ white jackets, and it is strictly invitation-only for official chefs to Royalty and Heads of State. Current Club Chairman is Christian Garcia – Chef to HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco (presumably recovering from his boss’ wedding a few weeks ago), and Vice Chairman is Mark Flanagan – Chef to HM The Queen (presumably managing without him during her Scottish visit for the wedding of her granddaughter Zara Phillips).

I am thrilled to see there are a couple of gals in the group, namely Cristeta Comerford, Chef to the President of the USA, and Sirkka-Liisa Ruottinen, Chef to the President of Finland, who always seems to have a female chef. I also wonder why the Italian president needs two chefs, namely Luca Frezza and Antonio Galli.

Judging by the official photo, taken with Gilles Bragard, left, and with hotel GM Leon Larkin, everyone had a great time in St Petersburg. I always love staying at this iconic, 301-room hotel, which dates back to 1824. I do not know which room I prefer: I have stayed in 207, overlooking the Russian Museum and the Pushkin Monument in Arts Square gardens. I love 125, the Amber Suite, named for the Amber Room commissioned by Frederick I of Prussia in 1701, its panels tragically lost somewhere near the Baltic coast during World War II. I love the Fabergé Suite (112), a haven of soft pink and gold colouring, with books on Fabergé and the famous eggs.

The hotel has about half a dozen eating places but my main delight is breakfast in the 1905-vintage Art Deco Restaurant L’Europe. A harpist plays in front of soaring stained glass windows and the buffet includes assortments of caviar and more types of Russian cheeses and cold cuts than one could possibly imagine. One renowned oligarch breakfasts here daily, always helping himself to the same fare. Start with seven whole rounds of watermelon, and full tumblers of beetroot juice and Smetana (runny sour cream). Go on to salad. Go on to cheese. What a memory of a gorgeous, superior Leading Hotel of the World, www.grandhoteleurope.com

Now THIS is a gal’s favourite type of chef – he looks real and healthy and interested, plus interesting (don’t we all hate pompous culinarians with beer-belly fronts, those that hark back to the days when it was said ‘never trust a skinny chef’). Today, the maxim is only trust a healthy chef. Anyway, this is Curtis Stone, the 35-year old Melbourne-born guy who forsook a degree in Business for his first love, food. He has just been signed by IHG’s Indigo to help promote local foods in Indigo hotels across the USA. I was lucky enough to visit the first-ever Indigo, which opened in Atlanta GA in 2004. A 1923-vintage university fraternity house which then became the Carlton Hotel, I loved the 140-room hotel’s collateral, things like door numbers and front-desk signage, all of which changed in pattern every quarter (just like retail, said then-GM, or In-Keeper Gabriel Webster). She hosted Canine Cocktails every Tuesday, inviting local dogs and their owners in to drink from a variety of beautifully-decorated dog bowls… lots of fun. Today, there are dozens of Indigos, across the USA and further afield. Curtis Stone will visit some of the American hotels, and a Locals Know Best – Dish on the Dish competition, via Facebook, will result in lucky people winning an all-paid trip to New York City, http://www.facebook.com/hotelindigo

The Sir Winston Churchill Suite at Corinthia Hotel London looks pretty good for a gal in London (although I might opt for another of the 294-room hotel’s seven Signature Suites, the Hollywood-style Lady Hamilton, which looks out, somewhat suitably, at Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square). Anyway, the Sir Winston Church comes in at 142 sq m, and it is two levels, and has a large terrace with an outside fireplace there, too. This is obviously just the kind of pad for a seriously-successful business person of either sex in which to entertain when in London.

Actually I think even the basic lodging at this stupenduous 294-room hotel is great. During soft-opening, I overnighted in 447, a ‘mere’ 46 sq m, superbly comfortable, with a walk-in closet and a bathroom with the electric towel rail that has long been a necessity in the best English homes. I luxuriated in the minibar’s Harrods snacks (Harrods has an in-hotel boutique, again a first – and Corinthia is ‘taking over’ the signature London store, now Qatari-owned, for three weeks in March 2012). In room 447, an eight-inch silver Maserati with rubber wheels is a reminder that the first London to Brighton motor race started from this building, in 1896. The wedge-shaped Thames-set building, squeezed in between Whitehall Place SW1 and Northumberland Avenue WC2, opened as Hotel Métropôle in 1885: it was later occupied by the Ministry of Defence, and it opened as Corinthia Hotel London end of April, 2011.

Easiest way to get to the hotel is frankly by tube (underground): it is two minutes’ walk from Embankment station.

Enter from either Whitehall Place or Northumberland Avenue, and you are amazed at the circular central lobby, about 11 metres across. From its glass cupola roof hangs Chafik Gasmi’s glimmering ball-shaped fireburst, four metres in diameter and formed of 1,000 colorless and one red Baccarat crystals, all with interior LED lighting. David Collins designed the Bassoon Bar (lots of fun, and yet another working fire), and the fabulous Massimo Restaurant and Oyster Bar. Someone has somehow persuaded Rome’s culinary heartthrob Massimo Riccioli to leave his La Rosetta back home and relocate here, and of course every Italian who knows his or her pasta-and-more migrated here, even before opening. This is down-to-earth, real Italian food, nothing pretentious, tall oyster platters and pasta with love, and the adjacent all-day Northall offers English and international food.

I love the way Corinthia Hotel London, under stylish GM Matthew Dixon, offers just the best. The four floor (sic) ESPA wellness stretches over 30,000 sq ft, with wavy walls of shiny, metal-dripped Lucite Kinon (or so it seems), and some white-gold gold leaf ceilings, and at least half a dozen working fires. There are 15 treatment rooms. a glass-walled, semi-sunken sauna that must be 20 by 15 feet, a vitality hydrotherapy pool of similar proportions, a massive steam area, and a 30-foot stainless lap pool. The tennis court-sized 24-hour gym has LifeFitness and those divinely-gruelling TriXter bikes that Sir Richard Branson loves. And, by the way, so do I. www.corinthia.com

A girl’s idea of heaven is staying in the 1786-vintage Walig (farmer’s) Hut – photo - high above Gstaad, one of Switzerland’s many unique experiences. One would, of course, need an escort. First, you take a 20 minutes’ hair-raising drive up from Gstaad, and rise above the treeline. Once there, you are in, well, something of a once-in-a-lifetime atmosphere. There is no electricity, but the one bedroom is cosy and warm (and you wake to the sound of cowbells). Definitely stay overnight, if you can. The king size bed (photo) is covered in fur skins and not surprisingly, I am told, most of the away-nighters telephone down (yes, mobiles work) to stay a little longer. The Walig Hut can be self-catering, or you can pre-order a personal chef and butler, who comes in edelweiss-embroidered shirts.

Hosts at dinner that night were Andrea and Laura Scherz (photo), who own and run the sensational Gstaad Palace, one of those iconic world hotels that – unlike so many others – truly deserves that accolade. And of course it is much easier to stay at the Gstaad Palace, and arrange your entire trip to the Hut, which they lease from local farmers, through the hotel’s concierges, www.palace.ch.

Right, so we arrived up at The Hut, in time for ultra-experiential sunset views down to the Palace as we sampled local cheeses and air-dried beef and a glass of white wine before going on to the seemingly-endless Ticino red. Then we moved inside, where the bedroom and adjacent sitting-dining rooms were near-roasting thanks to wood-burning stoves. Our table was set with hand-embroidered linens. The set dinner started with bowls formed of cooked pastry, each holding a melange of local wild mushrooms and tiny pasta bits. Next came plated wood oven-cooked loin of baby veal and vegetables. Desserts, served family style, included tuile rolls and baby meringues, raspberries and strawberries, a curd cheese cake, a bowl of amazing fresh cream, and icecream made from meringues and whey.

Andrea Scherz philosophized, over dinner, how, to him, luxury can be rural chic but it must be genuine. It must also combine old and new: down at the hotel, corridors might have cuckoo clock-type wood chests and the bar-lounge seating looks decades old, but new rooms, largely designed by the oh-so-stylish Laura Scherz, are full of taupe, her favourite color and one that appeals to both sexes, all ages.

They told me that when the seven-floor turreted castle first opened as a hotel - in 1913, as a result of new rail links with major Swiss cities – all its 100 bedrooms came with porcelain chamber pots in cabinets by bedsides, but washrooms and bathrooms were communal. Today the ensuite bathrooms have heated rails for drying towels and sportsgear, and Molton Brown and optional Cleopatra’s Duft-Oase luxury-tub oils, and non-fluffy bath linens that really dry, and designer toothbrushes rather than the cheapest chainstore type. I adored room 609, which had a bathroom tucked into one of the corner turrets so that you sit in your jacuzzi tub, looking down through 270° views to the valley (for ultra sensation, I toasted life with a glass of Krug).

How about this for a pool? It is what Butch Stewart added when he took over what was formerly Four Seasons Great Exuma Bahamas. What is now the truly beautiful Sandals Emerald Bay, Great Exuma, is a reason to rush back to the Bahamas. This is THE most gorgeous 500-acre, all-inclusive adult playground, with what seems like miles and miles of pristine beach (I know how lovely it all is, I was lucky enough to fly over the entire area in the helicopter that had been shooting for the Sandals corporate photo stock). Many come here to get married. Yes, the eternal lifestyle queen of the USA, Martha Stewart, has linked up, professionally speaking, with Butch Stewart (no relation). Even if nuptials or renewing vows are not on your current agenda, it is worth checking the brochure online. Flutter of Romance, for instance, comes with a ceremony in the Martha Stewart all-white open-air gazebo on a manicured area of bright green lawn. Pink highlights come through the bouquet, table linens to hold the silver-and-white Martha Stewart china, by Wedgwood, and pink butterflies, meticulously handmade from birds’ feathers, adorn place cards and the cake. And you are looking out over one of the few beautiful beaches in the entire region that is empty, apart from resort guests.

Beverly Maycock, wedding coordinator at Sandals Emerald Bay, Great Exuma, can do ceremonies for up to 200, and she can call in marriage officers to officiate. She has never been asked to provide the groom, or bride, but she can arrange a dress. Obviously at least the main participants will be lucky enough to stay in the resort (if kids are taking part in the wedding, they and their minders can get day-passes as Sandals Emerald Bay, Great Exuma, is strictly 18-or-over, and pairs-only).

Great Exuma is on the Tropic of Cancer, 300 miles south-east of Miami. At 40 by four miles, it is the largest of 365 islands stretching a total of 120 miles to form the Exuma Archipelago (the name Exuma is thought to come for ‘little pieces’. from the language of the now-extinct Lucayan Indians). Its George Town International Airport is now served regularly from Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Toronto and there are numerous Nassau and other intra-island connections. Twelve minutes after leaving the airport you drive up to what looks like a giant plantation house, to be welcomed with moist towels and a cocktail of the house sparkling (Pol Clément Brut Blanc de Blancs) and cranberry juice. The lobby has a framed, lifelike blue Marlin, polished hardwood floors, and a central ceiling rising cathedral style, to support a two-level wrought-iron chandelier. At the rear, a stone terrace looks down over a full-acre adult play-pool, with inset multi-person hot tubs, a swim-up bar and, also, plenty of space for actual swimming. Yellow and white-striped cabanas are occupied from breakfast-time onwards. Typically, new guests quickly unpack, head straight for this pool (or another, tranquillity, pool), and then perhaps take a long walk on the beautiful white-sand beach.

There are 249 rooms and suites, mostly in seven three-floor orange and white blocks. All are ocean-facing, and looking east: smallest room size is 490 sq ft. The most desirable of the private pale blue and white detached villas, right by the beach, is the total-4,000 sq ft Royal Villa, available as one, two or three bedrooms. Two-floor suite 8102 is the center part of this villa. You have polished hardwood floors, soft apricot or pistachio walls, and a variety of local art. There is a full kitchen, with an espresso machine (as in even base rooms), dining for eight, and, up 18 stairs, an office, a walk in closet and a huge marble bathroom, and the bedroom, with a terrace and loungers. Down to the main floor, the rear opens to a courtyard large enough for dining and lounging, thence to a 20-foot private pool and, beyond 30 feet of low scrub, that beautiful beach. Nothing is scrimped, here - Butch Stewart goes for the best, with Molton Brown toiletries and Frette linens. You can opt for access to a shared concierge lounge, or for a room with butlers, summoned by dedicated mobile phones. Our butler quickly brought an extension cord, and helped get into what was to be excellent WiFi (charged extra, but only $49 a week).

The 17-room spa is also an additional charge, but if I had the time I would be there at least once a day. Red Lane is Sandals own group brand, and the two therapists I had, Dawn and Deanlyn, were truly outstanding – the Dermalogica facial felt more like a loving medical analysis than the usual shoving-on of creams. Try a West Indian massage, with hot stones to symbolise the day-in-day-out weather that has enticed you to the Caribbean, and massage techniques that cleverly move, as if a wave gently breaking on the beach, down one arm and straight to that leg, and back up again. When you leave the spa, you are handed a card inviting you to share your thoughts on various interactive websites. (You can also spend, of course, in the attractive retail arcade, which has the island’s only duty-free store.)

You eat and drink for free, or so it seems, and there are so many choices – buffets in Bahama Bay, Italian in Il Cielo, English pub food in the Drunken Duck (a ‘real’ pub imported bit by bit from the old country), pizzas at Dino’s and, soon, a French fine dining restaurant. You can also opt for private dining back home, cost included, or, for a surcharge, have a romantic table set up elsewhere, say in Martha Stewart’s grotto. My own favorite would probably be a cocktail

in the busy-busy Drunken Duck, with its unpolished wood floors, tall-backed benches to create more-private seating areas, and stools up at the bar itself – over which hangs a ragamuffin collection of old cooking pots. There is a library corner, prominent television screens to please sports fans, and an adjacent games room has full size billiards, plus two small pool tables, and darts. And then, though we loved the Italian, I would return again and again to Barefoot by the Sea, which is local, say a big pork chop with Bahamian seasonings, or design-your-own, choose a fish, how it is cooked and what it comes with (I went for a superbly-tasty local swordfish, with lemon butter on the side, and a green salad).

There is, like on all-inclusive cruise ships, a pay-for-better wine list, but who bothers when the house pour is not only the aforementioned Pol Clément but Beringer Stone Cellers’ Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio? Similarly, the included-liquor offers such labels as Absolut, Bombay Sapphire, and Dewar’s White Label.

Oh yes, there are also events every evening. Sunday is a lovers’ game show; Monday is a cocktail hosted by GM Jeremy Mutton and his charming assistant, Patrick Drake, with a welcome beach party after; Tuesday is an Asian buffet followed by a chocolate extravaganza; Wednesday sees a lunchtime beach regatta, a Bahamian dinner buffet and charity casino royale; Thursday is Mexican buffet followed by a talent show (staff and guests!); Friday hosts a street-vendors’ market, Junkanoo Street Rush and Saturday is seafood buffet night.

Some lie for hours around one of the pools, but we prefer more exercise. There are six championship tennis courts, and a 24-hour gym. Watersports, including scuba-diving for PADI-certified, are all included. The 18-hole, par-72 Greg Norman course (surcharge) winds its paspalum bentgrass fairways in and around the island, in all a 7,001-yard tally, and Greg Norman’s Sharkshack is the club house. Since most stay at least a week, here at Sandals Emerald Bay, Great Exuma, it is a nice option to take a tour, say visiting the Butch Stewart-owned marina, or spending the day alone, just the two of you, on a private island that is also part of the Butch Stewart empire. Take a half-day tour of many islands, on a 26-ft Twin Vee Powercat. There is great deep sea, light-tackle and reef fishing. And, a unique concept, visit the swimming pigs at Pig Beach: yes, this is not a made up story, about a dozen pigs descended from feral ancestors have now, through many generations, learned to swim to pick up fruit and other food proffered by anyone who wants to feed them.

On the morning we left, we found, outside the door of 8102, the words Good Morning formed in red flowers, on the doormat. We looked at the green grass, the bright fuchsia bougainvillea, the white sand, the turquoise sea and we were loathe to leave. As Rory, from Jamaica, said, as he drove us back to the airport, this place is very special, and the beach is empty. It makes you smile. www.sandals.co.uk

My new best Polish girlfriend, Agnieszka Rog-Skrzyniarz provides a burst of colour (and her brooch show Marilyn Monroe). I was in Warsaw, to visit the SENSATIONAL Chopin Museum. From now on, I am going to find any museum – even such sacred cows as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Ashmolean in Oxford and the Victoria & Albert in London – boring, and old fashioned. Let me try and describe it. A building in central Warsaw was rebuilt after World War II’s disastrous bombing and it looks amazingly authentic. Imagine a three-floor 18th century palace, gilded and white and pale cream, rising out of a square brick fort with gently sloping walls rising to a height of 20 feet. In front of this beauty is a stone sculpture of a symmetrical pair of staircases taking you to main wood door, on the first floor of the palace. This is how you enter the Chopin Museum, which opened March 2010. Inside, you are on your own, to go at your own pace. A pressure-pad keycard suspended around your neck, and programmed to your required language, allows you to press to follow Chopin’s early studies, his travels around your choice of Europe, to interact with his contemporaries and friends, in many cases swishing from frame to frame as if an iPad. In a brick-vaulted basement looking like a schoolroom, separate listening booths allow you to choose your music from an electronic book, which actually has empty pages, and listen to your heart’s content. There are actual displays, too, including his travel diaries, and early manuscripts, and many of his actual pianos and a picture formed of dried flowers from deathbed, in 1849, at the age of 39 (much of the museum’s content is thanks to Jane Stirling, the Scot who graduated from being his student to his anonymous sponsor and on to his post-death curator). The museum has a room for kids, and, for all ages, a musical twister, where you twist on spots on the floor and music emanates, and another room where you pull out drawers, showing the work’s title and original manuscript and music comes out of one of 12 foghorns but, surprisingly, the resulting cacophony merely sounds like an orchestra warming up. Yes, sheer brilliance. The Chopin Museum is open daily, 12 noon to 8pm, www.chopin.museum

Agnieszka is Starwood’s PR supremo here and I stayed in Sheraton Warsaw Hotel www.sheraton.com/hotel. It is within minutes’ walk of Chopin, and Nowi Swiat for best retail, and the tourism of both New Town and Old Town areas. I loved the Tex-Mex food in Someplace Else sports bar. Best room is the -16 on any floor as you get a 270-degree salon, and access to the stylish sixth floor club lounge, where the healthy breakfast buffet includes fresh-squeezed juice and lots of berries.

Arniston Beach, right at the southerly tip of Africa. I went to visit Strandveld Vineyards, the most southerly in the continent – it is only seven miles further south to the Cape of Good Hope Two thousand acres of windswept, rolling land are, shall we say, somewhat isolated, but Conrad Vlok and his family just love living here (they are all outdoor people, fortunately). Conrad shares his passion for life, for nature, the soil and the food and drink he produces. Actually, he says, Strandveld is not only the wine, it is the terroir, a word he uses often. He has laid out a giant circle of the four different soils of the area, sandstone, quartz, iron and fossilised iron. 150 acres of the whole, set at 180-300 feet above sea level, are planted, with Grenache, Mouvedre, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon and Shiraz. Rows of vines are flanked by canola straw, for mulch, or wild mustard, to divert creepy-crawlies that might otherwise be tempted by the vines that already battle prevailing winds and a sometimes harsh climate. About 300 tons of grapes are hand-picked, in February. Stainless steel tanks and 25,000 French-oak casks are stored in a 13,500 sq ft winery, and 40% of the output will be exported. There are two main labels, www.strandveld.co.za. The foundation label First Sighting is named for explorer Bartolomeu Dias’ 1488 sight of land, and the premium Strandveld label refers to the coastal belt around the Cape (some Strandveld wines are named Anders Sparrman, for explorer and naturalist Anders Erikson Sparrman, 1748-1820). The most expensive wine we tasted, retailing for about 140 Rand, was the Strandveld Syrah 2008, a blend of year old vines, 95% Shiraz, 3% Viognier, 1.5% Grenache, 0.5% Mourvèdre. Picked grapes were left to cold-soak for 48 hours and, after fermentation, there was 18 months’ barrel-maturation before bottling on December 2nd, 2009. With an alcohol content of 13.7%, the wine has a nose of cloves, cracked black pepper and spicy aromas, layered with intense blackberry flavor. Vlok would pair this with roast beef, duck or venison. I was with one of Strandveld’s seven owners, Robert Appelbaum and his fiancée, on the left, the equally-fascinating Marina Coleman, teenage psychologist and author of the graphic book HIV & Aids, which has so far sold 115,000 copies worldwide www.marinacoleman.com. After a fabulous few hours of viewing, learning and tasting, it was time to head for the adjacent national parkand after that we headed for the hideaway shore-set fishing village of Arniston, where we stayed at Arniston Spa Hotel, www.arnistonhotel.com. I woke up the following morning looking through my all-glass wall at the waves crashing on the white sand 20 yards away, and went for a hearty bike ride over the dunes. What a way to start yet another day!

Johannesburg and Cape Town

Both South Africa’s main cities, Johannesburg and Cape Town, have so much to offerOK, I know Pretoria is the capital of lovely, so-worthwhile South Africa but really, who wants to go there? Far more exciting to head for Johannesburg, the business ‘capital’ of the country. The Saxon is where the young-successful locals (the Africans as opposed to the whites) seem to meet. These people know their wines, they know their cars (the Portia, sic, is the favorite brand) and they know the good life. I loved the gym, my favorite Technogym equipment and look what hangs overhead, egging one on, so to speak.But for glorious views, Orient-Express’ Westcliff undoubtedly wins. From my terraces of the Stephanie Powers Suite I looked over the hotel’s lovely outdoor pool and terrace, and Johannesburg Zoo and to distant Rosebank. The view was so amazing, indeed, that I dined in, off a bottle of bubbly – or part of it – and my comfort-food mainstay, fish and chips. The very-generous portion came with lots of mushy peas and tartare sauce. A gal-by-herself loves room service.OK, time for Cape Town. I stayed in the doyenne of that city, the one-and-only Mount Nelson, so beautiful, lovely gardens, and with, now, a fabulously modern Planet restaurant (even my connoisseur friend Robert Appelbaum, part of the HOTELS magazine’s 2011 great hotel restaurants of the world judging panel, raved about it). One morning in Cape Town I breakfasted with another dear friend, Lew Rood of Singita. We met at the buffet in Taj Cape Town. I also spent a night in the Tata Suite of Taj Cape Town. WOW, it has the most sensational rooftop eyrie imaginable, a glass-walled ‘bubble’ reached only above the suite. The enormous terrace that goes with all this turns into the ideal party spot at night. Real-wood ‘brais’, firepits, can be used year-round as the hotel provides plenty of blankets. My last day in South Africa I went along to Twelve Apostles for lunch with one of Lew’s former colleagues, Horst Frehse, who is now GM of this great, over-the-crashing-waves Red Carnation Hotel. I met up with Luke Bailes, who owns Singita. What a small world. And of course there had been time, on this trip, for some serious winetasting at Strandveld…