End-of-summer fun at Muratie Harvest Festival, Stellenbosch

This is one we never like to miss. Held in the gardens at Muratie you can drink their wines accompanied by lovely simple but satisfying food and enjoy the live music with lots of your friends

A warm welcome from Michelle Stewart who markets Muratie’s wines

And an old (young!) friend, Robbie Wallace, who is studying wine at Elsenburg and helping out on Muratie for the day, brings us our lunch hamper. His parents, Nicky and Paul, make the Black Dog Malbec at Wallovale in Elgin among their many other activities in making and marketing wine

It was filled with ripe cheeses, grapes from the vineyard, fresh figs, wonderful sourdough bread and butter

Queuing for lunch. There were huge beef hamburgers with all the fixings and chips - John had one of those

You could have spring rolls and samoosas with a dipping sauce

Lots of fun for the children, grape stomping

And the adults. Very messy, sticky business

And a bit backbreaking, which is why we now have powered grape presses

In the historic cellar with those spider webs which are national monuments

The rustic tasting room

We had a lovely table under the trees

Michelle doing the rounds of the media and her guests, who buy the wine for their shops and restaurants.  She had magnums of the Laurens Campher red and white wines

Lunch

You could have a port wine and tonic cooler. They were very popular and one of the crew had to rush off to buy more tonic. Muratie has plenty of Port

And the music was cool dude great. Rather reminiscent of Cream and Eric Clapton

and thirsty work for the musos

Lynne's lunch was a smoked salmon and cream cheese open sandwich. Totally what she wanted

John’s burger and fries

We so enjoyed lunch with, first, a glass of the Lady Alice MCC Cap Classique and then the very satisfying Laurens Campher White blend of 46% Chenin Blanc, 27% Sauvignon Blanc, 19% Verdelho and 8% Viognier, which is great with food

The friendly faces behind the wine counter, Robbie Wallace, Marissa Groenewald and a friend

A lovely, lazy Saturday wine festival

Lots of Lady Alice MCC cooling

The band played on

Michelle and Jean-Mari Strauss with more wine, red this time

The superb view of Table Mountain from Muratie

Thank you all for a lovely relaxed festival with great wine and good, simple food

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus

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Pairing biltong and Pinotage at L'Avenir

The Biltong and Pinotage Festival will take place at L'Avenir near Stellenbosch on the 16th and 17th of April this year and will be the best opportunity in the year to taste some of the most impressive SA Pinotages, all paired with Joubert and Monty's biltong. Get your tickets soon. The festival starts at 11h00 on both days. Tickets @ R150 pp includes a branded wine glass and a pairing card for the Pinotage and Biltong tastings. Bookings at www.plankton.mobi and selected Joubert and Monty outlets

We were invited, with other members of the industry, to taste a selection of these wonderful wines and pair them with the different flavours of biltong. 

This tasting was held in L'Avenir's brand new conference venue, The Single Block Rooftop. Each table was prepared with wine glasses and pots of all the different flavours of biltong, droëwors and salami: 1. Original Secret Recipe, 2. Droëwors, 3. Spicy BBQ, 4. Irresistible Chilli, 5. Sweet Red Pepper, 6. Smokey Sweet Chilli, 7. Lemon & Herb 8. Original Salami 9. Pepperoni Salami. We knew we would not need much supper that evening

Mr Pinotage, Beyers Truter, was there to guide us through the wine tasting. We were on our own with the pairings of the meat and had to fill our preferences onto a form

Ryan Bredenkamp, the new F & B manager at L’Avenir Wine Estate, telling us about the new venue we were in and about the coming festival

Our tasting table.

But first a glass of the Perdeberg Rosé bubble

Beyers nosing a Pinotage sparkling rosé

The Pinotages get poured and we start the hard task of pairing biltong et al with them. A very difficult exercise, as most of the wines were pretty special on their own and took some tasting

Maryke and Clifford Roberts busy concentrating and comparing notes. In the background Beyers and Cobie van Oordt, who organised the tasting

These are the wines we had to pair

Winery	Pairing Wine
Rijks	Rijk’s Touch of Oak Pinotage 2013
Kaapzicht Estate	Kaapzicht Pinotage 2012
Anura Vineyards	Anura Pinotage-Syrah 2013
Flagstone Wines	Flagstone Truth Tree Pinotage 2014
Altydgedacht	Altydgedacht Pinotage 2014
Remhoogte Wine Estate	Remhoogte Bushvine Pinotage 2013
Tulbagh Winery	Tulbagh Pinotage Rose 2015
Badsberg Wine Cellar	Badsberg Red Jerepigo 2014
L’Avenir Vineyards	L’Avenir Brut Rose MCC 2012
Chamonix	Greywacke Pinotage 2014
Boland Cellar	Cappupino Ccinotage 2014
Diemersfontein Wines	Diemersfontein Pinotage 2014
Beyerskloof Wines	Beyerskloof Chenin/Pinotage 2015
Rhebokskloof Wine Estate	Rhebokskloof Vineyard Selection Pinotage 2014
Diemersdal Wine Estate	Diemersdal Pinotage 2015
Lanzerac Wine Estate	Lanzerac Pinotage 2013
Mellasat Vineyards	Mellasat White Pinotage 2015
Perdeberg Winery	Perdeberg Sparkling Rosé 2015

The rewards afterwards were some cakes, pies, sandwiches and éclairs and, of course, the left over biltong

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus

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Lunch at The Food Barn with international visitors

We are always surprised how few Capetonians know about this superb restaurant in Noordhoek. Franck Dangereux is a classically trained French chef, who helped to put La Colombe on the map in the years before he opened his own restaurant. Franck married a local girl and settled here. He has trained many of our top chefs, all of whom speak of him with great respect. Go and try his food for yourself, you will not regret it

We spent a day out with a group of friends who are visiting from Australia, The Netherlands and the UK. First, we took them to Buitenverwachting, where winemaker Hermann Kirschbaum took us on a tour of the cellar, which is in full production at the moment. He showed us the fermenting grapes, soaking on the skins

and showed us the thickness of the top layer of grapes, and the intensely purple colour of this batch of cabernet. We then had a tasting of their wines in the tasting room courtyard

The Food Barn menu. You can order the set menu for the whole table, paired with wines, but we decided just to order à la Carte

A starter of a perfect Steak tartare for a real aficionado

Crisp mild Karoo cheese beignets with a cherry sauce and salad were much enjoyed

The home smoked salmon atop fresh asparagus in a gratinated artichoke and white truffle cream blew two of us away. Lynne's plate returned to the kitchen wiped clean and she intends to go back for more soon

So crisp; flash fried baby squid on a cauliflower brandade, with a cauliflower and saffron pickle, squid ink aioli and curry oil delighted those who had it

Four of us chose the Sorbet as a palate refresher. It was watermelon with a kick of alcohol...  

and then on to the mains

The Karoo Rack of Lamb was tender and came with a small apple, nut and turmeric tart tatin, a mild curry jus and coriander yogurt raita

Tongue is not something everyone enjoys; Lynne loves it and will order it from any menu on which she sees it. This meltingly tender meat came topped with a rich crisp trotter fritter, concasse tomato, a cornichon, parsley and caper sauce as well as a white wine and mustard jus, all of which complemented each other

Steak was the order of the day for four people; fillet for two and sirloin for the other two. It came with a raclette and potato croquette, shallot and syrah jus, tarragon cream drops and wilted spinach

The bill

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus

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