Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines
* Cape Town’s South Peninsula remains under attack from numerous fires raging over the past four days. Despite the most welcome rain earlier today, fires are still affecting the Tokai forest and Constantia wine farms, including Buitenverwachting, Klein Constantia, and Eagles Nest. The lightning of this morning’s thunderstorm ironically ignited a fire at Cape Point, which had to be evacuated as a result.
* Yesterday Cape Town was the hottest city in the world, at 42ºC, the highest temperature ever measured at Cape Town’s weather station at the airport.
* The Stellenbosch Wine Route has been named the best in the world, and has won the Best Promotional Body for the second year running at the Wine Tourism Awards 2015 of Drinks International. The Stellenbosch Wine Route is the country’s largest, with 150 members.
* Capetonians showed their generosity in the past few days, donating food, water and other beverages, and medical products at fire stations, at retail outlets, at schools, and at other designated collection points. Kfm and Cape Talk ran a Radiothon for the firefighters, most of whom are volunteers, and collected R3,1 million from its listeners during the course of today. The first million Rand was collected within the first four hours. The monies will go to Volunteer Wildlife Fire Services and other services involved in the fires. Primedia Broadcasting Station Manager Colleen Louw said: ‘The stations prides itself on being close to what the community’s needs are. At the moment there is an outcry for people to come together and do good. I am not surprised by the good Capetonians are doing‘. (received via media release from Primedia Broadcasting)
* UberASSIST is offeing its vehicles to collect donations for the firefighters in Cape Town as well as animal rescue services. Uber is encouraging donations of water, energy drinks, non-perishable foods, and loaves of bread. There is no charge to Uber’s collection of the donations. (received via Media release from Uber)
No mention of the fact that they were also Highly Commended in the Best Digital & Social Media Initiative category for their interactive StellenBlog… a project by your favourite Destineer? http://www.wine.co.za/news/news.aspx?NEWSID=26351
Nice to see you reading our Blog Richard!
I have not seen the Drinks International Awards results via Google, to verify the information, and to check if there are other Winelands winners. I called them this morning and Rick will e-mail the results.
Hi Richard and Chris – the results are up: http://www.drinksint.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/5251/The_Wine_Tourism_Awards:_The_Results.html
Nice representation from South Africa!
Thank you Marina.
I received a copy from the editor, and will post a story about the complete results this weekend.