Modern take on vintage South Africa

Lunch at Spier was buffet-style, cooked in an outdoor kitchen and eaten in a huge open-air tent. We grazed at each food station, approaching the game kiosk, well, gamely. So many choices: venison, boar sausage, kudu , springbok , and others I didn't even want to identify. Moving on, we sampled from a dozen vegetables with various sauces and chutneys, a seafood station, and a chicken kiosk with the birds roasting fragrantly on a grill. One man presided over potjie, a traditional Cape dish cooked in a three-legged cast iron pot over an open fire. Another served up tagine , a North African dish cooked in a conical clay pot.

A basket of traditional breads and dips appeared on our table and finally we staggered to the desserts, starring the country's favorite: rich, dense malva pudding .

This is lunch at Moyo , located on Spier's sprawling grounds. We ate to the beat of indigenous drumming while watching traditional dancers. Waiters came by with their brushes and white paint pots, the better to dot our faces Xhosa style. We were offered a taste of wine for free; a more extensive tasting of five wines costs 10 rand, or about $1.50. Oh, and about the wine, which brought us to Spier in the first place: It's fabulous and quite affordable.

After lunch, we strolled down to the vineyard's cheetah farm, where for a small fee, you can stroke the gorgeous cats, orphans raised on the premises.

The whites who migrated to South Africa often described it as the land of milk and honey. Now, it has become known as the land of pinotage and chenin blanc. France and California may have the name brands, but South Africa's Cape Winelands are beautiful and bountiful, with climate and terroir perfectly suited to the grape.

South Africans like to say their wines combine the best of the old and new worlds. Since sanctions against imports were lifted at the end of apartheid in 1994, the wines are becoming better known throughout the world. Not that the industry itself is new: The first grapes were planted by a Dutchman 350 years ago.