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above the clouds

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Wine Tasting in Thies Senegal

October 18, 2017 by Dave7 Comments

Dusty street near the winery

Lineup of their wines

With only two wineries in the country, our wine tasting options during our visit were somewhat limited. I reached out to both producers – one a grape producer with a small vineyard outside of Dakar (Le Clos des Baobabs) and the other a fruit wine producer (Vin du Sahel Winery) in Thies, the “second city” of Senegal – about 90 mins by car from Dakar.

The founders of Vin du Sahel Winery, Joe Sambou (along with his wife Kim) have multicultural backgrounds. Joe was born and raised in The Gambia but spent over 20 years living in Chicago. Kim, raised near Chicago, would enjoy wine with meals – Joseph became attracted to the aromas of wine – and became more intrigued with the wine world. He planted grapes at his home in Chicago and began to learn about wine making. It wasn’t until he moved to Mauritania that he really started to become engrossed in the world of wine. Mauritania is not a country one associates with wine (where Islam is the dominant religion in the country – since the 10th century) but while working in the country, Joseph spent much of his free time researching wine making (and making some home wine on the side).

Originally from The Gambia but now living in Senegal – Joseph started producing wine commercially in October 2016. As part of his research, he often discovered the same wines distributed in Senegal – from places such as France and Spain. He found no commercially produced wines from fruits grown in the area.

Production room

Dried fruit from the Baobab trees

During his research he discovered the Qvevri, clay vessels used to age wine in the country of Georgia. He was not able to find any of these in Senegal – but he did come across artists making some very small clay pots. He approached them about building something much bigger – they weren’t sure they could do so, their first experiments with the larger vessels ended up with a number of them cracking during the drying process. Ultimately they were able to perfect making larger vessels and Joseph purchased a number of them for his winery.

He makes the wine in a residential area – but without access to the ground he cleverly devised some alternative methods for ‘burying’ the clay vessels. He created external holders which contain sand that he places over the tops of the vessels.

Eventually he would like to move the winery to it’s own property with some land.

He makes a number of unusual wines – all in the 11 to 13% alcohol range. Baobab, Ditakh, Hibiscus and Mango, among others.

Friends with Joe enjoying some of his wine and the views overlooking Thies

And after wine tasting – we migrated up to Joe’s rooftop for views across the city and then headed to dinner at the nearby Chez Rosa Restaurant. This little hole in the wall felt like the quintessential African dining experience. Rosa was feeding wood into her open stove/pit while cooking a variety of meats (seemed to be the only dishes this restaurants served – along with alcohol). Over local beers and wild boar – we enjoyed a delicious dinner with good conversation – that drifted towards politics as it invariably does when locals meet tourists.

For more information visit: www.vindusahelwinery.com

Related posts:

Touring Napa Valley: Tasting wine where it’s made Monterey, CA – Wine Tasting Wine Tasting with NatureBox in the Napa Valley Exploring the World’s Two Largest Wine Caves & Wine Collections, Moldova Dave with the "Iron Chef"What a night, “Appellation Tasting” – Flavor Napa Valley

Filed Under: Africa · Tagged: Chicago, France, Georgia, Restaurants, Sand, Spain, Vineyards, Wine Tasting

Comments

  1. Joe Sambou says

    October 25, 2017 at 3:43 pm

    Dave, thank you very much for your great review of Vin Du Sahel Winery and am glad you had a nice time at the wine tasting and your experience in Senegal along with your friends. Hope to see you all again when you visit Senegal, a great place for Teranga (hospitality).

  2. Dave says

    October 26, 2017 at 1:11 am

    Joe – absolutely and thanks for the tasting. Not sure yet when I will be back in Senegal – Malawi, Gabon and or Uganda/Rwanda on my list for a next visit to Africa 🙂

  3. Dave | Jones Around The World says

    October 29, 2017 at 11:32 pm

    Wow super interesting! I would have never thought about wine tasting in senegal! I wanna try one!

  4. Dave says

    November 1, 2017 at 7:01 am

    Dave – yea, these days I check out most countries I visit for wine tasting options – I’m always surprised to find some element of wine in even the most unexpected places!

  5. Ranjan Khadka says

    June 26, 2018 at 3:44 pm

    Thanks a lot for sharing your travel experience in Senegal. It sounds more interesting to read about wine tasting in Thies Senegal. Hope that in future. I could also taste wine.

    Appreciate it for your great post.

  6. Ryan Biddulph says

    October 18, 2018 at 7:03 pm

    The dried fruit looks awesome too Dave. Senegal is on my travel list.

  7. Nicholas D Jenkins says

    April 13, 2019 at 4:17 am

    That is truly impressive. I can’t wait to visit Senegal!

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