Thursday, July 19, 2018

This Week's MENU. Tops at Spar Wine Show, Neil Ellis and Raath Promotions Trade wine tastings, Smoked Gammon with Spiced Garlic Potatoes, Beaumont New Baby 2017

Across Table Bay from Lagoon Beach - V&A Waterfront, Stadium and Green Point, with a trawler and one of the Cape's good winter storms coming in


After a small flurry of restaurants, our week shifted to wine tastings, all with different themes and characters and all with some really great wines. Next week, the scene will shift back to food and places to find it

After another flurry, of rain, we are suddenly almost back to summer. The temperature today reached almost 28ºC – in the middle of winter – and we’ve had a few days of beautiful sunshine. But the pundits tell us to expect more rain next week, for which we are most grateful. But we are still not swimming. Average dam level in the Western Cape is at 43.2%, which looks good when we were at 28% this time last year, but bad when we see that the level was 98% at this time in 2014. Lynne’s late Sunday afternoon gin and tonic while enjoying a hot bath is still some way off

Tops at Spar Wine Show
took place at Grand West Casino last weekend and we were invited by Jon Meinking to visit the show and taste 16 wines blind in his SA Wine Showcase Theatre. What a fun experience; we tasted so many good wines and some were really unusual. Good news for those of you in other cities, this show is travelling round the country and will be in Port Elizabeth 26th to 28th July and in Nelspruit on the 29th November to 1st December. It has already been to Durban and Johannesburg. The theme in Cape Town was ….

Tasting the wines of Neil Ellis at The Stack
Two more trade tastings this week, and both on the same day. The first was Neil Ellis Wines, which was held at The Stack in Gardens and was very well attended. There were lots of wines to sample including some older vintages, for which we are very grateful, as tasting older vintages is very important in judging how a farm's wines mature. We began at the white table ….

Raath Promotions Trade Show at La Mouette 
On to our second Trade tasting of the day, to taste the wines that Raath Promotions represents. The tasting was held at one of our favourite local restaurants, La Mouette, which is in Sea Point, next to Checkers. It was a very busy and lively tasting, with the diverse wines on offer attracting many trade people….

On the MENU this Week. Smoked Gammon with Spiced Garlic Potatoes Lynne found this recipe in her old tried and true recipe box and she hasn’t made it for years. It originates from Josceline Dimbleby, who travelled extensively. No clue as to where it comes from, but the rather Moorish or Middle Eastern flavours of this dish speak to North Africa – where they don’t use much pork or bacon! It is surprisingly spicy, we think from the fresh black pepper. It is almost a potjie and certainly doesn’t require much preparation. Marvellous flavours, so we know you will love it. Serve with fresh green vegetables like beans and broccoli or a large mixed salad, perhaps with shaved fennel and orange. We had this with a Paul Cluver 2015 Ferricrete Gewürztraminer which went perfectly with the spice. Beer would also go well….


MENU’s Wine of the Week. Beaumont New Baby 2017    
Tasted at the Raath Promotions trade show this week, this wine impressed us. After we tasted it, we discovered that it was the wine that everyone was talking about at the tasting. It was made by Sebastian Beaumont and is an unusual blend of old vine Chenin blanc, Sauvignon blanc, Semillon, Chardonnay and Colombar, all grown on the farm.... 

19th July 2018

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2018
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Phones: +27 21 439 3169 / 083 229 1172 / 083 656 4169

Postal address: 60 Arthurs Rd, Sea Point 8005

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
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