June is BOOK MONTH in Tapenade

With the winter holidays approaching, some of us (the lucky ones!!) will have time to sit back and relax with a book next to the fireplace. Visit the store during June for our biggest selection of books to date. You will find Annie Hawes’ Ripe for the Picking (our featured book of the month - learn more) as well as a variety of recipe and armchair-travel stories.

When talking about festivals like this one in general, you can either be a cynic or a romantic, and I must warn you right at the start that I am going to take the romantic tack.

Let’s get the cynical angle out of the way first. There is a school of thought which holds that a ‘festival’ in any number of the smaller South African towns that have them these days is a money making racket. You take whatever there is about your town that makes it slightly unique – potatoes, cherries, beef or mampoer, and you organise a weekend’s worth of food, drink, stalls and music. Many times it seems that the end goal was simply to make sure that everyone goes home slightly poorer, slightly hung over and perhaps with an interesting local arts-and-crafts artifact.

I tried to be strong. I tried being nonchalant. I even thought the weather would play its part in making this “just another festival”. But then our bright red little rented Kia Picanto made the last turn over the Bothmaskloof Pass that separates Malmesbury from Riebeek-Kasteel, and just like in the chocolate ad, all resistance crumbled.

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