Evening in the Devon Valley, Stellenbosch. From the terrace at Landtscap
Most of our weeks are busy. This was busier than most.
In addition to our usual round of activities, John has been filming a TV
commercial, the first time he will appear in any advertising made for the SA
market. The product is secret and cannot be revealed until it airs, so please
don’t ask. Summer is making its appearance, heralded by the South-Easter and
some lovely warm weather, but weather in the Cape is always a bit of a lottery
and the true nature of the season is not usually known until the end of
November, so don’t put away your winter woollies or your umbrella, you may
still need them
Time for the awards, now in its 35th year.
Every year Blaauwklippen holds a blending competition for wine clubs. Clubs who
enter from all over South Africa, are sent four varietals and asked to make a
certain type of blend. This year it was to be a playful but chic blend to enjoy
anytime with friends & family, but with enough backbone to be savoured at a
special occasion; from Shiraz 2017, Malbec 2017, Petit Verdot 2017 and Merlot
2017. We were welcomed by good snacks…
We visited Yonder Hill in the Helderberg
ward of Stellenbosch on Saturday with our wine club. The Cellarmaster here is
Abé Beukes. They made room for our large party in their tasting room and we had
a wonderful time tasting the wines. They also had laid on a lovely cheese
platter for us and we were given gifts of their olive oil from the farm owner
Mr Naude has recently sold Olyfberg, always a great oil. A lovely warm welcome…
which is the
longest running and most prestigious wine and brandy competition in South Africa,
dating back to 1991, and is said by Bennie Howard CWM, who is the MC of the
evening, to be the "Oscars of the South African Wine World". It is
indeed always a very glamorous, formal black tie affair. The Awards Ceremony this
year was held in the Ballroom of the Cape Town International Convention Centre
in Cape Town. There is a formal dinner, served with winning wines and, this
year, we were very excited to hear that the dishes would be by some of our top
chefs. The Gold and Double Gold Medals are presented during dinner and
afterwards there is coffee and a selection of winning brandy entries. This year’s
awards can be viewed on the Veritas website https://cld.bz/NSgFkua. Our story here...
Fresh berries
are coming in and we are loving the quality of the strawberries this year. We
had a bad Panna Cotta recently and thought we would give you our easy recipe
which never seems to fail. See the whole recipe…
This
is from Nova Zonnestraal, a Constantia vineyard which is believed to be one of
the oldest in the Cape, but which has only been producing its own wines in the
last five years. It is made from the farm’s own Sauvignon blanc, with an
addition of 15% Semillon which is bought in, as their own Semillon vines are
too young to be harvested. Herbaceous passion fruit and a very light pyrazine
hint on the nose and the palate, with crisp varietal acidity, good mineral
structure and a long finish. Read on…
12th October 2018
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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2018
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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
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