Beached hire boats on the rainy shore of Lake Windermere
Simple pleasures. The feel of soft rain on one’s skin and the smell of the damp earth after a long, dry spell. Simple and delicious food, enjoyed with a good wine. The company of good friends. Remembering some wonderful experiences. We’ve had them all this week and know that we are blessed. Amid the political turmoil here and in other countries, we are especially blessed to have all these things to remind us that life goes on and is beautiful. It is a privilege to share some of them with you
A joyous celebration at Delheim this week to help them celebrate the 80th year since the Hoheisen family bought the farm in 1939. Michael Hans “Spatz” Sperling came to the Cape from Germany in 1951. He joined his uncle Hans Hoheisen and his aunt Del on the Delheim farm, where he started to experiment with wine making, eventually adding to his knowledge by consulting with established winemakers. His first wine Spatzendreck, a natural sweet, was tasted by a friend who pronounced it “dreck”. He bottled it with a picture of a sparrow relieving itself on the label and it has been a favourite dessert wine for many aficionados ever since. Sperling is the German word for Sparrow and Spatz is the colloquial equivalent…
This year's Chardonnay Report from Winemag.co.za, in concert with sponsor Prescient Financial Services, was held in the Watershed at the V&A Waterfront this week. There were 93 entries from 65 producers and these were tasted blind (labels out of sight) by a three-person panel. Scoring is done using the 100-point quality scale. An outstanding 52 of the 90 entries (56% of the line up) rated 90-plus. South African Chardonnay is definitely coming to the fore after a while in the doldrums…
To the terrace at Blaauwklippen to meet the four teams who have made it to the final of the Annual Blaauwklippen Blending Awards. We were offered either a glass of Blaauwklippen’s new Garden gin served with a Chinchona Pink tonic made with ruby grapefruit and natural quinine, (not a hint of Angostura in sight) which tempted Lynne and was very refreshing. John opted for the MCC made from Zinfandel...
MENU's UK Adventure 8. From Glasgow to the Lake District; Keswick and Windermere and on to Leicester
It was time to head south, leaving Bonnie Scotland and heading for the Lake District in Cumberland. Lynne spent some great times there when she worked for Heinemann Educational Publishing as they took a group of staff up once a year to do some hill walking on hills like Helvellyn and Great Gable. We followed the paths of the beautiful hand written Wainwright guides and of course it was team building. We are well past fell walking nowadays and all we could do was gaze in wonder and amazement at the beautiful hills that now look so unachievable. Even Cat Bells looks steep. Our first stop was in Keswick and it was a slightly damp Sunday…
We had discovered that a friend from Knysna, Karen Shuttleworth Dames, known for her business The Little Herb Garden, had recently moved to the north of England and we wanted to get together, if only briefly. She suggested that we should meet at The Brewery in Kirkby Lonsdale, which was on our way between Windermere and our friends, who live at Horseshoe Cottage farm in Cropston, near Leicester. We had to meet at 10 in the morning as it's quite a distance to Leicester…
What do you drink with a simple supper? Something to go with Spaghetti Bolognese on a cold wet evening. Pinotage always goes well with tomato based dishes, so does any Italian grape grown here, so we dug in our cellar to see what might work. It had to be a red; we have had rather a lot of white wines over the last week or two…
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MENU has appeared nearly every week since March 2003, initially as a free newsletter from our shop, Main Ingredient, and is sent to our subscribers by email. Many of our subscribing readers have followed us from our earliest days and we appreciate your support
It is also published on our website, as a blog, on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram and gives our personal view of events relating to food, wine, accommodation and travel in photo stories, as well as weekly recipes and wine reviews
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MENU has appeared nearly every week since March 2003, initially as a free newsletter from our shop, Main Ingredient, and is sent to our subscribers by email. Many of our subscribing readers have followed us from our earliest days and we appreciate your support
It is also published on our website, as a blog, on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram and gives our personal view of events relating to food, wine, accommodation and travel in photo stories, as well as weekly recipes and wine reviews
We have never charged a subscription fee, and MENU has never made us any money. But our expenses are putting pressure on our pensions, so we are taking a bold step and asking our readers for a voluntary subscription to help us to cover our expenses. MENU is produced, on average, 45 weeks per year. We leave it to you to decide the amount of your subscription. We suggest a voluntary annual subscription of R100 (roughly the price of a mid range bottle of wine), which is less than R2.50 per week. In International currencies R100 is approximately £5.80/€6.30/$7.10. Links to our PayFast and PayPal accounts are on our website
We'd love it if you'd follow us on Twitter, Facebook and check out our photographs on Instagram and Pinterest
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