Moorhens in their mating rituals, Hemel en
Aarde Valley
A busy week. We had a wonderful weekend in the Hemel en Aarde Valley, celebrating a milestone birthday with a special friend and using the opportunity to taste some great wines and have lunch at a favourite restaurant. Then back to Cape Town to taste gin and more wines...
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- Breaking our fast at Mondiall Kitchen and Bar
- Celebrating Life and being 70 years young in the Hemel and Aarde Valley
- A Tasting at Creation
- Lunch at The Restaurant on Newton Johnson
- Gin is In, how about a Gin and Tonic? Or a Martini?
- A Trade Tasting of Wines from the Raath stable
- What’s on the MENU this week - Chicken and Corn Chowder
- MENU's Wine of the Week - Blom Rosé 2017 from Bartho Eksteen
Continuing our search for the perfect
breakfast in Cape Town we bought vouchers from Hyperli which took us to
Mondiall in the V&A Waterfront. We think it was good value at R109 for a
voucher for two people. Known for its wonderful position on the quayside at the
end of the V&A Hotel, we have enjoyed dinner there and we liked the
hamburgers from the Burger bar which we took home after a non-catered
Waterfront event, but this was the first time we’d had breakfast there....
We spent the weekend in the Hemel and
Aarde Valley at a friend's 70th birthday celebrations and much fun was had. As
part of the celebration they had arranged to have an informal tasting with
winemaker Bartho Eksteen on his property Die Wijnskool. Bartho was in great
form. He told us he prints all his wine labels in Afrikaans only. He says the
French, Italians, Germans and Spanish do it, so why not him. He reassured us
that if you want to know about the wine, his web site and all sales material is
in English. The wine that absolutely blew us away was....
Creation co-owners JC and Carolyn Martin
were at the Birthday party we attended on Saturday night and they invited us to
visit the farm next day so, as the day was beautiful and we were not due for
lunch at Newton Johnson till 1pm, we decided to take the short trip up the
valley. There is a lovely view of the Babylonstoren mountain over the Creation farm dam...
As we were in the valley for the weekend,
we wanted to try out this restaurant as we had not visited since its change of
chef from Erik Bulpitt to Ricky Broekhoven. They wanted to do less fine dining
and more artisanal food. Chef Ricky was sous chef to Erik Bulpitt and it is
good to see such a young and talented chef - he is only 26 - take charge of his
own kitchen. He did his training at the TCA under Rebecca Hurst and has lots of
good experience locally and overseas while he climbed the kitchen tree. He has worked in good restaurants in Sweden and with several respected South African chefs...
We were invited to taste Geometric Gin
this week at the Gin Bar in Wale Street. The gin is named after our much
endangered Geometric tortoise. It is produced by the Geometric Drinks Company
and made by Jean-Baptiste Cristini, with help from co-founders Andrea and Chris
Mullineux, who were inspired to "produce their own expression of Botanical
and Grape-based drinks". Analjit Singh, the force behind the Leeu
Collection, is also involved. Jean-Baptiste, known as Tista, decided to distill his own gin using locally sourced botanicals...
We took an Uber from Wale Street to get to
Harrington's Cocktail Lounge in Harrington Street, as Lynne has twisted her
knee. Kathy and Dane Raath represent several excellent wine farms and this is the
annual chance to taste them for the trade. The winemakers are present, so you
can ask lots of questions about vintages, terroir and the making of them. We
tried new wines, new vintages, some old, some favourites, one or two not, and
an exciting bottle of Chenin hoping to make it into the CWG Auction. The
judging of the CWG Auction entries will take place on Thursday this week...
The Chicken soup recipe seems to have
gone down very well so we thought you might like a variation. This is enough
for a couple of helpings for two people; just double up the quantities if you
want to feed four. You can use oil instead of butter, but it does lose some
richness. Chowder is half way between a soup and a stew and must have sometexture from the vegetables.....
This palest of pale rosé wines is made from Grenache,
Mourvedre and Syrah. Bartho took a risk. He says the grapes were producing such
beautiful juice this year that he blended the juice first and then made the
wine. It is a risk, and very hard to
repeat. The wine was so pale ...
© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2017
Phones: +27 21 439 3169 / 083 229 1172 / 083 656 4169
Postal address: 60 Arthurs Rd, Sea Point 8005
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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. 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. 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.
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