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Spring brings the
dragonflies back to our pond
In
this week’s MENU:
Amorim Cork Methode
Cap Classique Challenge Awards- Tasting Grenache
with Neil Ellis
- Heritage Day,
tasting wines at Avontuur
- Calling Woolworths
to task
- Wine Concepts
Festival of Seductive Sauvignons
Food and wine (and
a few other) events for you to enjoy- Learn about wine
and cooking
To get the whole of our story, please
click on “READ ON.....” at the end of each paragraph, which will
lead you to the related blog, with pictures and more words. At the end of each
blog, click on RETURN
TO MENU to come back to the blog version of MENU.
This week’s Product menu One of the sweet tooth delights we enjoy is Italian Amaretti biscuits,
delicious little almond macaroons which can be enjoyed with a cup of coffee or
as an ingredient in desserts, especially when drenched with Amaretto liqueur See them here
Amorim Cork Methode Cap Classique
Challenge Awards Every year, in South Africa, Amorim Cork
sponsors this competition for the best Methode Cape Classique wines, wines that
are made in the French Champagne method. The Awards ceremony was held last
Friday at the 12 Apostles Hotel and there were some surprises and also some of
the more familiar top names who received awards. Read On
Tasting Grenache with Neil Ellis Grenache
is a grape grown throughout Mediterranean France and Spain to make wines of
sweet warm fruit with spicy notes. In the Rhône, it is one of the component grapes
used in Chateauneuf du Pape. It is being grown more and more in South Africa
where our climate and terroir suit it well and we are producing some very
interesting and attractive wines from it. Neil Ellis have been growing this for
many years and we were very intrigued to be invited to take part in a vertical
tasting of their Piekenierskloof Grenache dating from 2004 held, appropriately,
on International Grenache day.
These wines are currently made by Warren Ellis, who joined
his father Neil in 2006. Warren is also the Viticulturist. We started with the
current vintage 2012 and, while these newer wines are fresh and fruity, they
show great future potential. As we got further back to the older wines, you
could see the character of the wine maturing and becoming more elegant and full
with softening tannins. They do clearly show their terroir and reflect the
climate of the year in which they were made. We enjoyed tasting these wines
very much. We also did a small tasting of their Rodanos red blend, where the
base wine is shiraz, but the other wines may vary every year. In 2010 and 2011
Grenache was the blending wine, in 2012 it was Cinsaut. Many of these wines are
very food friendly. Read more
Heritage Day, tasting wines at Avontuur Avontuur
in the Helderberg is one of South African premier racehorse studs, which also
makes a little wine. Well, that’s what they told us on Heritage Day, on which
we were invited to come and taste their wines. It is hard to define “a little”
when they tell us that they make 48 000 bottles of their best selling Estate red
blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot! They make several other wines. The
wines in the premium range are named after their prize winning race horses. The
farm is owned by the Taberer family and the wines are made by Jan van Rooyen. Read on
Calling Woolworths to task Woolies
has not yet entered into the spirit of Banting. We hear from staff in the
stores that they are about to but, yesterday, we bought something for supper
that was rather shaming. It was the only salad on the shelf that did not
visibly contain any carbohydrates. No pasta, no beans, no potato etc. Called a
Crunchy Summer Salad it contained carrot, cabbage, tomato, spinach, onion and
watercress. There was a small envelope of pumpkin and sunflower seeds included
and one of salad dressing. Sounds perfect, until you discover that the salad
dressing includes Maple flavoured syrup, honey and Balsamic vinegar with
caramel, and ‘starch’. What were you thinking? It was completely unnecessary.
These small additions took a healthy 150g salad to 15.6 Glycaemic carbs, it was
horribly sweet and cloying. Try harder please. Oil and vinegar work well
enough.
This week’s recipe
As we are writing this in our lovely room at the Lodge in L’Avenir,
there will be no recipe this week. And next week you will read about why we are
here: a vertical tasting tonight of L’Avenir Pinotage with dinner prepared by
Bertus Basson, one of our favourite chefs.
Amorim Cork Methode Cap
Classique Challenge Awards We gave you the results of the 14th annual Amorim Méthode Cap Classique Challenge last week, but did not have time to edit the photographs. See the full story here
Wine Concepts
Festival of Seductive Sauvignons Come and join us at this superb festival celebrating Sauvignons Blanc and Rouge at the Vineyard Hotel tomorrow. Always a glittering event, you can taste some of the best Sauvignons this country produces from 50 top farms. Bookings: Tickets cost R170 each and can conveniently be purchased via www.webtickets.co.za at Wine Concepts in Newlands or Kloof St or at the door on the evening, subject to availability. Telephone Newlands at 021 671 9030 or Kloof Street at 021 426 4401. And you could book yourself dinner at the Vineyard afterwards.
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 type of
event for which we have information. To see what’s happening in our world of food and wine (and a few other cultural events), visit
our list of wine and food
pairing dinners, list
of Special events with wine and/or food connections,
list of Wine Shows and Tastings and list of special dinner events.
All the events are listed in date order and we have a large number of exciting
events to entertain you right through the year. Events outside the Western Cape are listed here.
Learn about wine and cooking We receive 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 of Cathy’s WSET and other courses here
and here and the CWA courses here. Karen Glanfield has taken
over the UnWined
wine appreciation courses from Cathy. See the details here
The Hurst Campus, an accredited school for people who want to become
professional chefs, has a variety of courses. See the details here
Chez Gourmet in Claremont has a programme of cooking classes. A calendar of their classes can be seen here.
In addition to the
new Sense
of Taste Culinary Arts School, Chef Peter Ayub runs a
four module course for keen home cooks at his Maitland complex. Details
here
Nadège Lepoittevin-Dasse has French cooking classes in Noordhoek
and conducts cooking tours to Normandy. You can see
more details here.
Emma Freddi runs
the Enrica Rocca cooking courses at her
home in Constantia.
Lynn Angel runs the Kitchen Angel
cooking school and does private dinners at her home. She holds hands-on cooking
classes for small groups on Monday and Thursday evenings and she has decided to
introduce LCHF (Banting classes). The Kitchen Confidence classes, which focus on
essential cooking skills and methods, have been expanded and are now taught
over 2 evenings. She continues to host private dining and culinary team
building events at her home. She trained with Raymond Blanc, and has been a
professional chef for 25 years. More info
here
25th September 2014
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 online shop 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 and standard 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 and our
blogs 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
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