We were invited to attend the Sommeliers Selection wine awards last week at 11 am and we drove through to Franschhoek, making sure that we would be on time. As we arrived, we discovered that the awards ceremony had already taken place and many of the winners were leaving. So our story is very short. We asked why we had not been invited to the ceremony and were told that they had been told by other media that it is boring! We would never find watching our colleagues, friends and compatriots whom we work with in the wine industry, being lauded and receiving awards at all boring, ever. What we do find hard to handle is driving a two and a half hour round trip to taste some wine and then driving home again after missing the important part of the story. Even though we tasted some very good wine - but we do that anyway.
If you want to see the 2019 list, download it here https://www.thesommeliersselection.co.za/
There were some platters of fruit, cheese and cold meats
These are some of the chosen wines in their categories
There are several bubblies on the list and one or two dessert wines. Sommeliers were pouring the wines for us
Nice to see Paul Kruger from Villiera with Megan Mullis of Domaine des Dieux
Lovely views from Rocca restaurant on Dieux Donne wine estate
Paul, again with pretty ladies
Shane and Megan Mullis from Domaine de Dieux have their bubbles on the list
And they had no idea what fantastic honour was to come their way on Friday night at the Veritas awards,
where their 2015 Chardonnay was given the Vertex award for best wine in the Veritas competition. Huge congratulations
The red wines were on two tables
Brad Gold of Iona in conversation with one of the serving sommeliers
And the colourful lads from the Stellenbosch Brewing Company with their award for the...
... Whaow! Imperial Stout
At the end of the tasting at 12.30 we could taste some of the CBC Beers poured by brewer Wolfgang Koedel of CBC
We loved the Mandarina Bavaria IPA
Organiser Darielle Robertson heading home at 1, as were we
All content © John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus
