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According to this over-sized ornamental wine barrel, which was a gift to Bergkelder/Distell, the first South African wine was launched by Jan van Riebeek on a Sunday, back in 1659. That's kind of ironic, given that we still have such antiquated laws around buying alcohol on a Sunday.

(As an aside, Jan's wine wasn't very nice apparently. That's what happens when you try to grow vines practically on the beach. Fortunately the Constantia vineyards were established in 1685.)

I was visiting Bergkelder thanks to winning a competition run by Ultra Liquors at the end of last year. (Thank you!) Bergkelder is the home of Fleur de Cap wines - which buys its grapes in from all over the country. It is also the industrial heart of Distell, which owns pretty much every wine and spirit label in South Africa you can think of, from Durbanville Hills, to Nederberg, to Two Oceans, to JC Le Roux, to Three Ships Whisky, to Amarula. It even owns distilleries in Scotland.

There is no doubt that wine is an industry in South Africa. These tanks hold 46,000 litres of wine each, but are babies compared to 174,000 litre tanks elsewhere at Bergkelder. The bottling plant handles 12,000 bottles per hour, from filling to corking or capping, to labelling and even boxing the wine in automatically folder cartons.

The cellar has something like 3000 barrels housed in it, at a cool R8,000 per barrel. This is not small change.

The tour itself is pretty slick, and would be a nice intro to South African wine, especially for tourists. Personally, having done the rounds of both large and small vineyards and wineries, and been lucky enough to chat to a number of winemakers, I prefer a slightly less formulaic approach. But I guess it's horses for courses and Bergkelder certainly is a polished representation of brand SA wine. The tour through the underground cellar is quite fun, moving from alcove to alcove for each tasting (2 whites, 2 reds and a delicious dessert). So much it made of the unfiltered wine-making process that I would have quite liked to do a comparison of the filtered and unfiltered wines.

Well worth the visit however, and I'm fascinated by the thought that the first wine in SA was launched on a Sunday.

Four more training sessions in week two and still loving it. The step up from running one minute to running for two shows me just how much I need to work on my cardio though - but I am sure that will come with the gradual build-up. I added a pilates class into the mix on Thursday(just being careful not to overdo the stretches) and was still comfortably able to go out again on Friday morning. That's what has struck me the most since migrating to my Vibrams - I never feel like I have over-trained or overdone it, I'm never hobbling around barely able to walk, but I can also feel and see results much sooner that I would have previously. I've also started running off the paving, in the grass and over inclines, and I can see it's going to be lots of fun hitting the trails in these shoes.

Being kept company by a pod of dusky dolphins every morning just off Mouille Point has been an added bonus.

According to Tim Ferriss in the 4-hour Body, it's important to do something 5 times to change behaviour and start forming a habit. So I'm glad to have completed 5 Vibram train sessions in week 1, and enjoyed every single one of them.

I definitely am getting a more well-rounded workout, and am getting more benefit out of what essentially was 27 mins of walking with 3 mins of running spread in between. I'm used to walking so don't really feel like I get much out if it anymore, but that has changed in my Fivefingers. Interestingly though, my muscles never get so stiff that I can't comfortably carry on with the programme the very next day, but at the same time am already noticing the difference to my fitness and strength.

The ultimate proof of the pudding was having 2 of the best surfs of my life this weekend. Not only did I feel fitter and stronger, there is a lot to be said for the confidence  from being back in my body thanks to the Vibram programme.

I realised this morning that week 1 to week 2 is relatively the largest jump in the programme - I'm doubling the amount of time I am running this week to 2 mins run and 8 mins walk. I dropped my speed down a little after ramping it up a bit at the end of last week, but somehow I think this week is going to be about improving my cardio to run for a bit longer each time.

My mild obsession with Vibrams started at the end of last year when my sister got a pair and they just looked fab. Not only that, they seem to make sense, especially for someone who is most comfortable in a pair of flip flops over any other shoe. Finally, as a somewhat cynical marketer, anything that goes back to basics, before big brands and profit margins got involved, gets my vote (having said that, Vibrams aren't cheap). My hatred of shopping malls meant that it took until yesterday and a workshop held by Vibram South Africa and Benita de Witt for me to get my first pair.

Aren't they beautiful:

This also coincided with me wanting to get back into shape for a whole lot of reasons, including improving my surfing. So my plan is to follow the 12-week beginner's convert to barefoot running programme - getting fitter and stronger along the way.

For once my couch potato lifestyle of 2011 has paid off, I can go straight into barefoot running, unlike regular runners who need to follow a conversion plan. I do need to build strength in my backline, especially calves, in order to run in Vibrams and stay injury free.

The first week consists of 6 days of 30 mins each, consisting of 1 minute running and 9 minutes walking x 3. Each week this is adjusted - so next week I'll be running 2 mins and walking 8, until the 12th week where I'll be running 5km/30 mins non-stop.

I'm aiming to run between 4 and 6 times a week. It's less than an hour a day, so should be doable.

So this morning I headed out for my first session along the Sea Point promenade and I loved every minute of it. The feel of the ground beneath my feet was unusual but not unpleasant. Walking felt very comfortable, running even more so. Instead of running heel first, the ball of your foot strikes the ground first and after about 3 seconds you realise this is a far more natural style - like a child's. I didn't have any of the wading through thich mud trying to wake up my muscles experience I usually feel when starting to run after a break. What's more, your knee is bent on impact, meaning way less jarring up your leg and into your hip. I would often run for longer than the minute, just because it felt so comfortable.

Around half way through I could feel the stabilisers along the inside of my leg begin to engage. Immediately after I definitely felt my backline had worked harder than usual, even though this had been a relatively gentle and very manageable 30 mins. My feet too felt like they had worked. Now, at the end of the day, my hamstrings are tired and I can feel my calves have had a workout. Be interesting to see how stiff I feel tomorrow morning when I get up for session 2.

Summary:

5 min walking warmup and cool down

1 min running, 9 mins walking x 3

Sunny and calm morning

Sea Point promenade, west

I love this description:

When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends, most of whom were in cool Indie bands or peripheral Camden figures Withnail-ing their way through life on impotent charisma. Carl Barrat told me that “Winehouse” (which I usually called her and got a kick out of cos it’s kind of funny to call a girl by her surname) was a jazz singer, which struck me as a bizarrely anomalous in that crowd. To me with my limited musical knowledge this information placed Amy beyond an invisible boundary of relevance; “Jazz singer? She must be some kind of eccentric” I thought. I chatted to her anyway though, she was after all, a girl, and she was sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable.

Read the rest of Russell Brand's tribute to Amy Winehouse here.

Love this wine label. And the wine's pretty fantastic too. A delicious blend of viognier and chenin from the Swartland.

One of the commentators in the documentary on Tretchikoff's life and work, found in the middle of the main exhibition room, says something along the lines of: Tretchikoff was the artist Andy Warhol set out to be. Controversial for a number of reasons, it seems that mostly the elite art establishment hated that Tretchikoff actually made money while alive, mostly because he made his work available to anyone via affordable prints. Apparently he has sold more prints than any other artist.

There used to be a bar in Notting Hill in London in the early 2000s called Trailer Happiness that had a couple of his prints up, and I don't think anyone entirely believed me that Tretchikoff was South African. (Oh look, the bar is still there, as are the pictures! Yay.) Apparently he was wildly successful abroad and had a lengthy tour of America and Canada in the 1950s, and took over the ground floor of Harrods in the early 1960s where 205,000 people saw his work. Included in the Cape Town exhibition is a letter from a Canadian buyer. She agreed to pay $6,000 for the painting, on the provisor that it was delivered to her house within two weeks of the tour ending, she was so desperate to get her hands on it!

The exhibition also gives a fascinating glimpse of Cape Town in the 1950s and 1960s: from paintings of the Cape flower sellers, spice sellers and fishermen, to the receipt from Garlicks department store in Adderley Street for an exhibition there. Tretchi paid £30 per day for the priviledge and Garlicks ran full page ads in the Argus and other newspapers to promote the show.

Go see the exhibition, now!