Sunday, February 26, 2023

In MENU This Week - Jordan Harvest, Lunch at Brookdale, Dave Hughes RIP



The road into Brookdale wine estate, Paarl

Lighten our darkness… the prayer we used to recite at evening prayers at school. Those of us who live in Cape Town’s Atlantic seaboard have had it answered – temporarily. Because the Formula E motor race was held in our vicinity yesterday, and power had to be available to charge the batteries of the cars, we have had continuous electricity for just over a week, but we are not holding our breath and expecting it to continue. It has had its downside. The race track was created from some of the streets in Mouille Point and Green Point, around the Cape Town Stadium. This meant that all traffic was diverted to a restricted number of streets. The congestion was awful. We went to Franschhoek on Friday morning. It took nearly 40 minutes to travel the 2 Km from our home to the CBD and getting home was a similar story. However, the coverage of the race gave huge exposure to our beautiful city and will, we hope, bring more tourists… if the “government” doesn’t wreck it.

Today, we tell you about two lovely wine estate experiences and, sadly, have written about the death of a South African wine icon.

2023 Harvest Lunch at Jordan

Each harvest, Gary and Kathy Jordan invite media and trade to visit them, hear about this year's harvest and taste some of the results. We were so pleased to hear from both Kathy and Gary about the past year. Read on...

Brookdale Estate launches their new Bistro

Last year, we were invited to Brookdale Wine Estate in Paarl to meet their young and talented winemaker Kiara Scott and to taste the excellent award winning wines she produces. We also met the chef Gary Coetzee and his wife Yvonne, the General Manager, who told us that they were building him a larger restaurant next to the new wine cellar and we would be invited to sample it when it opened, which it did at the beginning of February. This week we received the invitation. Read on...

Dave Hughes RIP

A South African wine revolution started in the 1960s when a few bright young men worked at Stellenbosch Farmers Winery and Nederburg. The wine industry was rigidly controlled by the KWV, who set quotas which determined the size of the crops grape farmers were permitted to make and the varietals they were allowed to grow. There were very few individual wine producing estates and SFW and the KWV bought most of the crop. Read on...



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Posted by MENU at 2:49 pm 0 comments

RIP Dave Hughes CWM

A South African wine revolution started in the 1960s when a few bright young men worked at Stellenbosch Farmers Winery and Nederburg. The wine industry was controlled by the KWV who set quotas which determined the size of the crops grape farmers were permitted to make and the varietals they were allowed to grow. There were very few individual wine producing estates and SFW and the KWV bought most of the crop.

These enterprising young men led the way out of a rigidly controlled industry into a new way of thinking about wine and marketing it.

Prominent in this group were Ronnie Melck and Duimpie Bayly at SFW, Günter Brözel at Nederburg and, a few years later, Dave Hughes and Bennie Howard, also at SFW. Dave, at the age of 84, has now joined Messrs Melck and Bayly in the great cellar in the Universe after a long and illustrious career in the wine industry and after several years of declining health.

Duimpie Bayly, David Biggs, Bennie Howard, Dave Hughes

Dave had a deep knowledge of the wine and spirits industry and shared it with all who wished to learn from him. He was exceptionally generous and kind and never had a bad word to say about anyone. He founded the Cape Wine Academy in 1979 and was awarded the title Honorary Cape Wine Master in 1983 together with the first three Cape Wine Master graduates, Bennie Howard, Duimpie Bayly and Tony Mossop.

With Phyllis Hands, first Principal of the Academy, and John Kench he produced one of the first glossy coffee table books about the wine industry, The Complete Book of South African Wine, in 1983. It was followed by a second edition in 1988 and by Wines and Brandies of the Cape of Good Hope in 1997. These books, along with the publication of the first Platter guide in 1980 were very influential in increasing brandy and beer-drinking South Africans’ interest in the wine industry.

Dave was deeply religious and a devout Catholic. Many wine-related meals we attended started with a specially composed Grace which he wrote and delivered. His lightness of spirit infused every gathering he attended and his death is a tremendous loss.

All the stories we have published can be seen in the Blog Archive near the top of the column on the right

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Posted by MENU at 1:51 pm 0 comments
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