Fruit of the Vine – “Grapes of Grace”

We left Cape Town early morning and after three hours of listening to Gay and her sister, discuss what Diane wanted, but had not yet seen or experienced on her three week tour of South Africa, it was clear we needed to stop at a vineyard so Diane could take pictures of grapes, hanging on the vine.

The problem was, we had driven through the Stellenbosch wine region too early for good light, and now we were driving through a beautiful valley with lots of grape vines visible, but no exits to get close enough to take pictures. So I decided to pray that the very first time we could pull off this highway, I would turn onto a road to take us into a vineyard.  Lord give Diane a picture of grapes on the vine.

After passing miles of vines, I braked hard when I saw a dirt drive, pulled in and went down a lane where grapes hung on the vines. Diane quickly jumped out and knelt to get close-up shots, just like she wanted. Gay and I sat in the car; pleased we fulfilled her sister’s wish.

It seemed like a good idea to drive farther down this dirt road; maybe the winery is open, we passed men working, obviously it was harvest season. There was a place to park in front of a group of buildings. We walked down some steps to see the winery tasting room.  Turning into the first building, we found ourselves greeted by a man who saw us through the glass door of his adjoining office.  We asked about the winery.  He smiled, explaining they had table grapes. “This whole valley grows table grapes for export, primarily to the U.K. and Canada”. After a few questions and brief discussion, Paul smiled and asked if we would like a tour of the facility.

Our enthusiastic response, led to giving us the required white robes and hairnets.  He was describing their process of harvesting, with 60 men working the fields, when he opened the doors and said “240 women work in here”.  Wow!  This was not a warehouse, it was a high production facility, with overhead package conveyors and workstations.  Each team handles every cluster of grapes six to eight times to insure each plastic box holds the finest quality. Boxes are then placed into cardboard shipping flats, loaded on pallets, prepared for shipment.

As we surveyed this morning’s pallets of fruit from the vine, Paul explained a truckload would be shipped overnight to Cape Town, loaded on an ocean freighter the next day, and be on supermarket shelves in the U.K and Canada in three weeks.  None of their grapes are sold in South Africa.

At the end of this very thorough, professional 45-minute tour, we had a whole new appreciation of the process used to deliver table grapes, which Gay has always loved. Paul walked us to our car, carrying a very fresh tray of 12 boxes – a beautiful picture to remember, “Grapes of Grace”. Thank you, Lord, for another prayer answered, very differently, and so far beyond what we could ever imagine.