Thursday, April 30, 2015

This Week's MENU - Glen Carlou Curator’s Collection, TVM Trade Tasting never disappoints, Graham Beck 25 years, Gold Restaurant, The Wine Cellar tasting room, Long weekend activities, Beef Chasseur

A flight of Quelea at Elandsberg Reserve
In this week’s MENU:
* What are you doing this (long) weekend?
* Beef Chasseur
* Learn about wine and cooking
We write about our experiences in MENU, not only to entertain you, but to encourage you to visit the places and events that we do. We know you will enjoy them and we try to make each write up as graphic as we can, so you get a good picture of what is on offer at each place, restaurant, wine farm, festival we visit.
To get the whole story with photographs, 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.
It was a celebration week!      A time of rejoicing and partying with some of our friends in the wine industry, who have milestone events to celebrate. We had a ball and were completely overindulged. Then came the long weekend, in which we planned to go to De Kelders for four days to stay with friends and enjoy a lunch at Marianne’s. But the gastric flu that is going around struck Lynne, so we had to cancel. It’s over, John did not get it and we’ve had time to enjoy this week as well.
Glen Carlou Celebrates The Curator’s Collection Launch & Arco Laarman’s 20th year as a winemaker     Arco’s winemaking career started as a worker with Danie Steytler in the cellar at Kaapzicht. After a few years there, winemaker David Finlayson appointed him assistant winemaker at Glen Carlou and, when David left, Arco took over as Cellarmaster. Over the years, he has experimented with different barrels of the wines they make and has also made wines from grapes sourced elsewhere, often rare varieties. These are now being released as The Curator’s Collection and are available only on the farm. We were invited to lunch to celebrate his winemaking career and to taste these very interesting wines. Read On.....
TVM Trade Tasting never disappoints     Tracy van Maaren represents a small range of wine farms and, once a year, we are treated to a very good tasting of their wines. This year, again, it was held at Auslese, the function venue in Gardens owned by Chef Harald Bresselschmidt of Aubergine restaurant. He creates a food pairing for each of the wines on show. Read On.....
Graham Beck Celebrates 25 years     Graham Beck sells more than a million bottles of their MCC Bubbly every year and that figure is now rapidly on the rise. All the Graham Beck wines are part of our rich wine tapestry and most people know them well. None of us realised that winemaking on the farm was started by Graham Beck only 25 years ago. His purchase of the land followed the Laingsburg floods of 1981, when the existing farm was almost wiped off the face of the earth. The farm was perfect for horses, his great love, and they also began to plant grapes. In 1991 they had their maiden vintage and “the journey of discovery in pursuit of the perfect bubble” commenced, driven by winemaker Pieter (Bubbles) Ferreira, who is still the magician wielding his magic wand there. We celebrated with so much MCC from so many different years and in so many different guises. This was followed by an excellent lunch prepared by Chef Margot Janse of The Tasting room at Le Quartier Française in Franschhoek – what a treat and what an ebullient and joyous celebration! They totally spoiled us. Read On.....
The Gold Restaurant Experience      Where do you go to show visitors the African experience? There are now several places and they are all different. We were invited to experience Gold Restaurant’s newly launched Autumn-Winter set menu and enjoy all the other amusements. We took part in the drumming, which started at 6pm, along with a huge group of tourists, and then proceeded to dinner which comes with enthusiastic live, boisterous and loud entertainment throughout. Read On.....
Wine Cellar celebrates the opening of their new tasting room and above ground retail space. Wine Cellar is one of the premier outlets in the Cape at which one can buy fine local and international wines and also store your own wine collection perfectly, should you not have a cellar. We were invited to this newly finished function room (which is available for hire) for a tasting of David Trafford’s Sijnn wines, paired in a blind tasting, with some foreign wines. It was an excellent tasting of some very, very interesting wines and this was followed by an excellent Pork Chasseur dish accompanied great chewy artisanal bread, unsalted butter and good cheese. www.winecellar.co.za/ Read On.....
Game drive at Bartholomeus Klip    We totally ran out of time last week, getting MENU out on time, so this part of our visit comes to you this week. The Elandsberg Private Nature Reserve has some interesting animals, great birds and plants and has three very special animal projects. They breed virus free Buffalo in an enclosure, they are part of the Quagga restoration programme and they have a Tortoise rescue and breeding programme, with fenced reserves for these wonderful animals that are so badly affected by our fires. Read On..... to see the pictures of what we saw on our 1½ hour game drive. Oh and it was lambing time on the farm.
What are you doing this (long) weekend?     The choice of festivals continues and this weekend has the Elgin Cool Country wines and the Olive Festival in the Riebeek area. We can’t go to both, so we are heading for Elgin on Saturday. Enjoy whichever you choose, and may the weather not dampen your enthusiasm. We so need the rain.
Coming soon:
15th May                Burgundy Lover's Festival at The Vineyard
This week’s recipe might well be suitable for this wet weekend. It’s a one pot dish and it is one of our all time favourites. You can fry the mushrooms separately and just add them at the end, to the dishes of those who like mushrooms. It’s a hunter’s dish and you can use pork, game or even poultry should you wish to, but you will need to vary your cooking times accordingly. Poultry will take less time, game may take longer.
Beef Chasseur
1 kg beef or veal stewing steak – 125g medium mushrooms – 2 T canola oil – 30g butter - 2 small onions or 4 shallots, chopped – 1T plain flour - 2 wine glasses Verjuice or white wine - 425 ml good beef stock - 1 T tomato purée – a few baby carrots – salt and black pepper - a bouquet garni of celery, rosemary, thyme and a bay leaf
Cube the meat into 3 to 4cm pieces. Wipe and slice the mushrooms. In a heavy oven-proof casserole, heat the oil with the butter and quickly brown the meat, a few pieces at a time, till golden brown, then remove it and set aside to keep warm. Reduce the heat, add the mushrooms and sauté them till they begin to brown. Remove them too. Add the onions and the flour and mix well, then fry until they are a good russet brown colour. Add the wine or verjuice and the stock a little at a time and deglaze the bottom of the pan. Add the tomato purée, the bouquet garni and the carrots. Put back the beef and the mushrooms. Cover with a well fitting lid and put into the oven at 180ºC for at least 1 and a half hours. Before serving, remove the bouquet garni, dish up the meat into your serving dish and reduce the sauce; adjust the seasoning and then spoon it over the meat. Serve with small new baby potatoes or with mash and a good green vegetable like French beans, or broccoli. Superb with a rich Cabernet or classical Bordeaux blend.
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
In addition to his 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
Nicolette van Niekerk runs baking courses at La Petite Patisserie in Montague Gardens
George Jardine will be running a series of winter cooking courses and other activities at Jordan. Details here






30th April 2015
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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.
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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 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.
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Elandsberg Nature Reserve

We totally ran out of time last week, getting MENU out on schedule, so this part of our visit to Bartholomeus Klip comes to you this week. The Elandsberg Private Nature Reserve has some interesting animals, great birds and plants and has three very special animal projects. They breed virus free Buffalo in an enclosure, they are part of the Quagga restoration programme and they have a Tortoise rescue and breeding programme, with fenced reserves for these wonderful animals that are so badly affected by our fires
Next to the dam
Stone pines on the edge of the reserve
Misty morning game drive
The buffalo in the reserve
A large bull and one of his cows
You don’t get close to one of Africa’s most aggressive animals
Nice to see all different ages in the enclosure, the breeding programme works
Early morning sun breaking through the clouds
A flock of quelea rises out of the scrub
Farm buildings outside the reserve, with sheep grazing
A rare and very welcome sight, a secretary bird. These, sadly, are now very rare
A sudden movement and this steenbok ewe rose up out of the grass next to the Land Rover
Springbok grazing together, We saw some “pronking” but the camera could not catch them as they were too far away
The rutted road through the reserve has seen many journeys and is not suitable for vehicles designed for urban roads
Is this the same bird or another one?
We thought we were driving through reeds until the driver pointed out that they were leucodendrons
A grove of Eucalyptus trees. These were planted for shade by early farmers
Especially along wagon trails to give the wagons some shade
These are the small flowers of the leucodendrons
Up close you can see the almost protea-like flowers
We saw several bontebok
some with really pied markings
Grazing on the fynbos
Is this bird following us?
Some steenbok on the far hilltop
They leap the fence or crawl underneath, so that they can graze the crop fields
Huge vistas and the park runs right up to the mountain
Back to the home farm, where twin baby lambs
were being born
© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2015

Wine Cellar launches their new tasting venue in Observatory

Wine Cellar is one of the premier outlets in the Cape at which one can buy fine local and international wines and also store your own wine collection perfectly, should you not have a cellar. We were invited to this newly finished function room (which is available for hire) for a tasting of David Trafford’s Sijnn wines, paired in a blind tasting, with some foreign wines. It was an excellent tasting of some very, very interesting wines and this was followed by an excellent Pork Chasseur dish accompanied great chewy artisanal bread, unsalted butter and good cheese. www.winecellar.co.za/
The tasting room all set up for the tasting. It now has a large photographic mural of the Stellenbosch mountains
Co-owner of Wine Cellar, David Brice, welcoming us all and telling us about the refurbishment and other changes. The end wall has been carefully covered with rocks collected by him and others from the Sijnn property on the Berg River and shows some very interesting sandstone and quartz river washed rocks
They still have to put up some shelves but, otherwise, the room is now finished
We began with a glass of Drappier Brut Nature Champagne
Bottles wrapped for the blind tasting
David Trafford tells us about his wines. The first one we tasted was his 2013 White Blend made of 76% Chenin, 20% Viognier and 5% Marsanne Roussane. It is a typical Chenin, full of rich layered fruit – golden apples and plums with a hint of woodsmoke. Good acidity and freshness. R175 a bottle
Roland Peens of Wine Cellar took us through the foreign wines. The second wine was a 2012 De L’Orée, a Hermitage Blanc made by Chapoutier from 100% Marsanne. Also golden fruit with a more mature backbone, almost a sherry-like character in the centre and some wood on the back palate. Roland rather spoilt us with this wine; he has just unpacked it and wanted to taste it. It’s a rather breathtaking R1450 a bottle. John found it very hard to spit a wine costing a large number of Rand per mouthful
This was followed by a Niepoort 10 Vertente Field Blend from the Douro in Portugal; full of bloody merlot cherries, smoke, violets, cassis and smoky bacon. Dry dusty tannins, cherries and chalk on the palate. Still to open up. R225, This was paired with David Trafford Off Centre: a Trincadeira and Mourvèdre blend. Green herbaceous nose, with cherries beneath. And greengage fruit with crisp acidity then mulberries and chalk. David said he was trying to make it taste foreign. He succeeded. R220
The delicious bread basket which had some of us Banters recanting for the evening
The Pork Chasseur with mushrooms on a polenta slice was prepared by a local caterer in Nelson Road, Observatory
James Pietersen of Wine Cellar making sure everyone has enough glasses
The line up of the wines we tasted. There were some very interesting foreign wines and many of them did match well with the Sijnn wines. The two Syrahs were both exciting. Sijnn 2012 was full of chocolate and cherries with smoky bacon and soft chalky tannins. We scored it high. R270. It was matched with a 2012 St Joseph Syrah from Northern Rhône, Le Grisières, which had a rather rich Burgundy nose of complex fruits, forest floor, mushrooms and leather. Pure red and black berries with chalky tannins reminded Lynne of Hartenberg’s The Stork Shiraz. R300
The last two wines were also very interesting and delicious in a very different way. A 2012 from the USA - Robert Haas Côte de Tablas Creek in California, a blend of Grenache, Syrah, Counoise and Mourvèdre The nose is pretty with layers of fruit - mostly rhubarb and raspberries. On the palate, light red cherries and berries with whiffs of wood smoke R465. This was paired with the Sijnn Red: Vanilla and dark fruit with herbs on the nose, delicious rhubarb and vanilla custard on the palate with soft chalky tannins, some salt and umami flavours. This was our best wine of the tasting. We confess, we are huge Trafford fans and have several of his good wines in our cellar, some of them Winemakers Guild wines
David Trafford with his Sijnn winemaker, Charla Haasbroek, and Harry Pieterse, who were responsible for building the stone wall
They hold these tastings fairly regularly. If you are interested, you need to get on their mailing list. We loved the evening and the opportunity to taste these wines
© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2015