The Christian Eedes Top Ten Cabernet Sauvignon wines for 2012

Christian Eedes presented his 2012 Top 10 Cabernet Sauvignon awards this afternoon at French Toast wine & tapas bar in Bree St. The wines were judged blind by Christian with Roland Peens of The Wine Cellar and James Pietersen, sommelier and beverage manager at Belthazar and Balducci's, from 60 wines selected as finalists. He said, "The line-up was blind tasted according to the 20-point/ 5 Stars system. After the first round of judging, 14 wines were considered to have particular distinction and these went through to a second round where the panel could give them more detailed examination - out of this emerged the top 10,”

The Christian Eedes Top Ten Cabernet Sauvignon wines for 2012 are:
Five stars
      1. Delaire Reserve 2009
      2. De Trafford 2009
      3. Graham Beck The Coffeestone 2009
      4. Tokara 2009
Four and a half stars
      5. Cederberg Five Generations 2009
      6. Rickety Bridge Paulina’s Reserve 2009
      7. Stark-Condé 2009
      8. Stark-Condé Three Pines 2009
Four stars
      9. Kleine Zalze Family Reserve 2007
     10. Louis 2008
 We were welcomed with a glass of Villiera's Brut Natural chardonnay MCC

and excellent canapés from French Toast, generous helpings of which were in there for us all through the event.
Louis Nel, enjoying a glass of Villiera

Christian Eedes with Corlien Morris of Wine Concepts

Christian and Alwyn van der Merwe, Sanlam investments director. Sanlam sponsored the event 

Winemakers and media enjoyed the food and the wine 

John Harrison, owner of French Toast, with Christian Eedes 

Alwyn van der Merwe addresses the audience 

John Loubser, GM of Graham Beck, Corlien Morris and Hennie Coetzee

Awarding certificates: Louis Nel 

Wynand Grobler of Rickety Bridge

José Conde of Stark-Condé received two awards 

Morné Vrey of Delaire Graff 

David Trafford, for De Trafford Cabernet sauvignon

John Loubser, accepting the award for Graham Beck Coffeestone Cabernet

Dumisani Mathonsi accepts the award for Tokara 

The wines were presented in soft plastic "marbles" which helped to keep them at the right temperature

Wynand Grobler and Jeanri-Tine van Zyl

Jacqui Kildare and John Loubser, Graham Beck

and, after a good wine tasting,nothing refreshes more than a cold beer - Jonathan Steyn, Christian Eedes and André Morgenthal 

For further information, or to download the full report, visit www.sanlamprivateinvestments.co.za or www.whatidranklastnight.co.za.

These photographs are ©John Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2012

May 17th 2012 Main Ingredient's MENU - Villiera at the Vineyard, Sue Anderson trade wine tasting, Hartenberg’s The Stork, a champion, Hostex, Chicken and artichoke risotto, Bottled v purified water, Products

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A pair of African spoonbills looking for lunch

In this week’s MENU:

     Products

     Our market activities

     Villiera at the Vineyard

     Sue Anderson trade wine tasting

     Hartenberg’s The Stork, a champion

     Hostex

     Chicken and artichoke risotto

     Bottled v purified water

     Events and Restaurant specials

     Wine courses & cooking classes,

Products   Argan oil might be here sooner than expected. We hope to be able to supply it early in June because one of our suppliers has stock on its way. We have replenished our stock of walnut oil and 500ml cans of well-prices hazelnut oil should arrive next month.

In addition to the 200 gram jars of Valrhona Guanaja couverture chocolate “beans”, we should soon have more of the excellent Callebaut 70% couverture chocolate callets, for those who are looking for a more affordable alternative. We have new stock of beluga lentils and black beans. French mustards have been selling well and we have boosted our stock of these and of our French patés. For those and any other products you need, you can access our product list and see pictures in our website. If you can’t find what you need, let us know and we will try to find it for you. Until our online shop is ready, drop us an email and we will help you. We are very happy to see that traffic on our website is increasing and more orders are coming from it.

We have a lot of fun putting MENU together each week and, of course, doing the things we write about, but making it possible for you to enjoy rare and wonderful gourmet foods is what drives our business. We stock a good range of ingredients and delicious ready-made gourmet foods. You can contact us by email or phone, or through our website. We can send your requirements to you anywhere in South Africa.

Our market activities  Come and visit us at the Old Biscuit Mill’s brilliant, exciting and atmospheric Neighbourgoods Market, as always, this Saturday and every Saturday between 09h00 and 14h00. Tip: Some visitors tell us how they struggle to find parking. Click here for a map. We will be back at Long Beach Mall on Friday 25th May from 09h00 to 16h00. We look forward to seeing you there.

Tastes of 2012 Villiera dinner at Vineyard Hotel   Invited for a friend’s 75th birthday celebration to eat in the Square restaurant last Friday, we were delighted to discover that it coincided with one of the Vineyard’s excellent wine and food pairing dinners, which they now hold every two weeks. (See their programme in our Events Calendar). We met in the foyer, where all the guests gathered for a welcoming glass of Villiera Brut Natural 2008, full of lovely ripe and mature flavours – an aged bubbly, very much to the gout Anglais (English taste), and then went in to dinner. Sadly, the table was not suitable for our host’s wheelchair, so there was a short wait while an appropriate one was found before then we sat down to the first course.

We so enjoyed this meal and will definitely be back to try another soon. The price of R265 per person includes all the wine, but not coffee or bottled water. The next one will be with Ernst Gouws & Co Family Vineyards on May 25th. However, a recommendation is that you do try to sit away from the rather loud piano, which does make conversation a little difficult. The service, as always, was discreet but attentive. Thank you, Sheehan, for letting us be part of your celebration. See description and photos here

Sue Anderson’s Trade Tasting at Burrata Restaurant in the Old Biscuit Mill precinct was held on Tuesday. Neil Grant, formerly the sommelier at Rust en Vrede, opened this restaurant with a Southern Italian theme recently, in the passage which leads to Luke Dale Roberts’ two restaurants. The head chef is Annemarie Steenkamp, who has spent the last five years at Le Quartier Français. We were served very good canapés and some slices of thin, crisp and smoky pizza during the tasting, so it is definitely a place to try if you like good Italian food and great pizza. We might be tempted to have one for lunch when we have finished working at the Neighbourgoods Market on Saturdays. If we are not watching carbs...  Read more here.

CONGRATULATIONS TO HARTENBERG’S THE STORK 2008     We wrote about the marvellous Hartenberg Shiraz, The Stork 2007, at the beginning of the month when we tasted it at the Taj Expressions of…. Tasting. We are absolutely delighted to hear that their 2008 has just won the Top Shiraz in the World accolade at the Syrah du Monde competition in France. We think it is very well deserved. Well done to wine maker Carl Schultz and the rest of the team. This wine will be released in South Africa in September. Get your orders in now.

Boschendal Cecil John Reserve 2009, Saronsberg 2010 and Rust en Vrede 2009 were also gold medal winners. Bravo, it is so great to see South African Shiraz getting overseas recognition. Taste some really sensational Shiraz at Hartenberg on the 2nd of June when they hold their Feast of Shiraz and Charcuterie. You’ll find the details in our Events Calendar.

Hostex   We attend this Hospitality Industry trade show each year and each year we find a couple of new suppliers. This year, we found some new Belgian chocolate, some very interesting Italian balsamic products and some excellent stocks from the United States. We are talking to the distributors.

Today’s recipe is a solution for left-over chicken. Yes, this dish does contain carbohydrates and some vegetables and it is absolutely delicious. We find it difficult not to crave this sort of food when the weather gets cold. You could use the left-over carcass of the chicken to make the stock, or just use a good commercial stock, like Nomu Fond.

Chicken and Artichoke Risotto

A pot of light chicken or vegetable stock (about 1.5 to 2 litres) - 1 onion, very finely chopped – 1 stick of celery, finely chopped - 1 clove garlic, finely chopped – 1 t fresh thyme leaves - 1/2 T extra virgin olive oil – ½ T butter - half a red pepper, finely chopped into small cubes – 2 cups Risotto rice – 250 ml dry white wine – 4 to 6 artichoke bottoms, each sliced into six pieces - 1 cup of cooked chicken in small pieces – ½ cup depodded broad beans or peas – salt and freshly ground pepper – 1 T butter

Put the stock on to simmer. On another burner, in a heavy bottomed pan, fry the onion, celery, garlic and thyme in the oil and butter till transparent and soft then add the red pepper and fry gently for two minutes. Put in the rice and let it coat in the oil and fry for one minute. Put in the wine and let it bubble so the alcohol burns off. Then add a couple of ladles of the hot stock. The secret is to cook the rice slowly in quite a lot of liquid and stir or shake the pan occasionally to circulate the rice. Do not let the rice dry out and as soon as you see it getting dryer, add more stock. If you cook too fast or on two high a heat the rice will only cook on the outside and get very mushy. When the rice is nearly done, add the chicken, the artichokes and the broad beans and warm through for five minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning. The risotto should be quite soupy and creamy but not mushy, the rice should still have a separate grains. Draw the pan off the heat, stir in the butter and let it rest for five minutes then serve. Serves 4.

One of our pet crusades is against buying bottled water when perfectly good local tap water is available. We are especially lucky. Our water comes from high on Table Mountain, with minimal treatment, and it tastes clean and pure. Other areas are less fortunate and the water can be, at best, “perfumed” with a hefty dose of chlorine, which does justify buying a better-tasting water. Bottled water comes at a huge environmental cost. It is transported over huge distances, with a very large carbon footprint and the glass or plastic bottles are, too often, not recycled. We salute the initiative taken by Protea and African Pride Hotels, who have equipped more than 30 of their hotels with water purification units, enabling them to do away with bottled still water in their restaurants, bedrooms and conference facilities. They offer their guests purified still water in re-usable glass bottles instead. There is no charge for this. At least another 30 of their hotels will be added to this initiative in the next few months. It is an example we would love to see followed by other hotels and restaurants.

Food and wine (and a few other) events for you to enjoy

There is a huge and rapidly growing variety of interesting things to occupy your leisure time here in the Western Cape. There are so many interesting things to do in our world of food and wine that we have made separate list for each month for which we have information. To help you choose an event to visit, click on our Events Calendar. All the events are listed in date order and we already have a large number of exciting events to entertain you right through the year. Click here to access the Calendar. You will need to be connected to the internet.

Learn about wine and cooking   We have had a lot of enquiries from people who want to learn more about wine. Cathy Marston and The Cape Wine Academy both run wine education courses, some very serious and others more geared to fun. You can see details here.

Chez Gourmet in Claremont has a programme of cooking classes. A calendar of their classes can be seen here. Pete Ayub, who makes our very popular Prego sauce, runs evening cooking classes at Sense of Taste, his catering company in Maitland. We can recommend them very highly, having enjoyed his seafood course. Check his programme here.

Restaurant Special offers. Some more restaurants have responded to our request for an update of their special offers and we have, therefore, updated our list of restaurant special offers. Click here to access it. These Specials have been sent to us by the restaurants or their PR agencies. We have not personally tried all of them and their listing here should not always be taken as a recommendation from ourselves. If they don’t update us, we can’t be responsible for any inaccuracies in the list. When we have tried it, we’ve put in our observations. We have cut out the flowery adjectives etc. that so many have sent, to give you the essentials. Click on the name to access the relevant website. All communication should be with the individual restaurants.

Winter is coming in with a bang, but we can still expect some wonderful clear and sunny days. Make the most of them and enjoy a picnic on a wine farm; several wine farms offer picnic facilities. We have put together a list of wine farms who can provide you with a picnic, We haven’t put in much detail, just where it is, phone number, email address and a link to the website. The latter is where you will find all the important information. Go and check it out.

17th May 2012

Remember - if you can’t find something, we’ll do our best to get it for you, and, if you’re in Cape Town or elsewhere in the country, we can send it to you! Check our product list for details and prices.

PS If a word or name is in bold type and underlined, click on it for more information

Phones: +27 21 439 3169 / 083 229 1172 / 083 656 4169

Postal address: 60 Arthurs Rd, Sea Point 8005

Our Adamastor & Bacchus© tailor-made Wine, Food and Photo tours take small groups (up to 6) to specialist wine producers who make the best of South Africa’s wines. Have fun while you learn more about wine and how it is made! Tours can be conducted in English, German, Norwegian or Dutch flavoured Afrikaans.

Recommendations of products and outside events are not solicited or charged for, and are made at the authors’ pleasure. All photographs, recipes and text used in these newsletters are ©John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus. Our restaurant reviews are usually unsolicited. We prefer to pay for our meals and not be paid in any way by anyone. Whether we are invited or go independently, we don’t feel bad if we say we didn’t like it. Honesty is indeed our best policy. While every effort is made to avoid mistakes, we are human and they do creep in occasionally, for which we apologise. Our Avast! ^® Anti-Virus software is updated at least daily and our system is scanned continually for viruses.

Recommendations of products and outside events are not solicited or charged for, and are made at the authors’ pleasure. All photographs, recipes and text used in these newsletters are ©John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus. Our restaurant reviews are usually unsolicited. We prefer to pay for our meals and not be paid in any way by anyone. Whether we are invited or go independently, we don’t feel bad if we say we didn’t like it. Honesty is indeed our best policy. While every effort is made to avoid mistakes, we are human and they do creep in occasionally, for which we apologise. Our Avast! ^® Anti-Virus software is updated at least daily and our system is scanned continually for viruses.

This electronic journal has been sent to you because you have personally subscribed to it or because someone you know has asked us to send it to you or forwarded it to you themselves. Addresses given to us will not be divulged to any person or organisation. We collect them only for our own promotional purposes and keep our mailing list strictly confidential. If you wish to be added to our mailing list, please click here to send us a message and if you wish to be removed from our mailing list, please click here to send us a message.

Concha y Toro Chilean wine and food pairing

Tuesday lunchtime at La Feta Fij Eatery in the High Street shopping centre in Durbanville.

We began the tasting with a good Italian Belstar Prosecco.

The purpose of the tasting was to match Concha y Toro wines with South African food. Concha y Toro is one of the largest wine producers in Chile; their vineyards are in many different climatic and geographical areas throughout the country.

Chef Anneke Burger, using guidance from chef Ruth van Waerebeek in Chile, put this meal together adding a South African slant.

The wines were presented by the effervescent Andy Barrett who represents the importers

and Moises del Rio Orrego, who has come from Chile to represent Concha y Toro in Cape Town.

First course was a smoked snoek burger on a sweet potato cake with a grapefruit infused cream cheese.

This matched the superb flavours of the Trio 2009 Chardonnay blended with Pinot Blanc, and Pinot Grigio.

You know a wine is a huge success when the media keep asking to see the bottle again, to examine the label one more time and to pour just a little more into their glasses. This happened a lot during this lunch as the wines were very good. This golden wine is buttery but crisp, dry and full of flavour and structure and is a very satisfying food wine. It is wooded but not at all smoky.

Our next course was an Empanada (a pastei) filled with roasted beetroot & aubergine, mint, goat’s cheese and gruyere béchamel.

The earthy flavours of the vegetables perfectly matched the savoury and minty Casillero Del Diablo Malbec 2010 which is full of sweet raspberries, cassis and violets and, like the pastry, is hot.

Then came a tiny portion of smoked springbok carpaccio with bobotie-flavoured stewed peaches and a huge slice of toasted mielie bread.

Given that mielies come from South America, this was a good idea and the spicy springbok and bobotie sauce, if not the peaches, enhanced the wine, Trio Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 - blended with Cabernet Franc and Shiraz.

Full of vanilla from the American oak, which slightly overwhelms the cassis fruit on the nose. Then the toasted wood lets the chocolate and spice break through to showcase the soft rich fruit and over-delivers. Our comment on the wine? Yum.

A deep fried breaded meatball of boerewors on a creamy black pepper pap with a rich berry juice

replicated the flavours of the Casillero Del Diablo Carmenere 2010 – the wine once thought to be Merlot but now known to be the historic Bordeaux varietal Carmenere, which Phylloxera exterminated in France.

It survived and is now the most widely planted grape in Phylloxera-free Chile. It tastes like a blend of good Merlot with Shiraz, as it has some spice and a savoury structure with deep dark fruit. Lynne had a theory on tasting it and asked if the chef would be so kind as to send us a slice or two of tomato, which she kindly did; we decided that yes, this wine is one of the few can stand up to the sweet-sour flavours of tomato, so it could go very well with Italian food.

The rather chewy Parmesan crusted ostrich medallions on a creamy mashed potato with a caramel fudge crumble were a little bland and sweet and cried out for something more robust, like olives or a berry sauce, to go with the wine, a Trio blend of Merlot, Carmenere, and Cabernet Sauvignon.

The wine does indeed smell faintly of vanilla fudge and, on the mouth, is a silky spicy mocha, cassis and cherry blend with hot pepper and chilli notes at the end.

Our last course was a warm Bourneville chocolate-chilli shot served with a walnut biscotto, topped with a piece of sticky marmalade. Rather too many chilli flakes but a good ‘dessert’ taster to go with the final wine: Casillero Del Diablo Riserva Privada 2009, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah.

Expensively wooded, so well-toasted and redolent of cassis, red cherry, herbs and white pepper on the nose. It is a very smooth mouthful, spicy and hot with a secondary flavour of raspberries, almost pinot noir like and ending in dark licorice and chocolate.

Our question: should pairings like this try to replicate the flavour of the wines in the food? Or should they pick ingredients which complement the wines? These wines are available at several supermarket chains and other retail outlets.

You, too, can go along and enjoy some wines and the food of 25 wineries and 20 food stalls in the centre at the 8th Winter Wine Festival on 21st to 23rd June. See http://www.blogger.com/www.winterwinefestival.co.za