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Monday, March 27, 2017

Wine Concepts Chenin and Pinotage at The Vineyard

Chenin Blanc and Pinotage shone at the Wine Concepts Celebration

Last Friday saw us at Wine Concepts’ Chenin Blanc and Pinotage Celebration at the Vineyard Hotel. A chance to taste new and older vintages of both of these varietals which are such an important part of the South African wine portfolio, to network and to meet and taste the wines of a few new (to us) producers. Chenin blanc continues on its climb to the top of South Africa's white grape varieties. It can do so much, show a huge variety of different styles; it ages superbly and it suits our climate, varied as that may be at the moment. The same could be said of Pinotage, although it struggles to gain respect from people who don't know or understand it, receives less exposure, less lauding and, sadly, the amount planted seems to be in decline. Pinotage shows its stellar face when it has some age and is treated much like its parent Pinot noir in the vineyard and cellar. Cynics who taste it blind often pick it as their favourite wine of the tasting after dismissing it as an oddity beforehand. Lynne concentrated on tasting the Chenins, John cherry picked both varietals. It was impossible to taste them all; there were 88 wines on show

Simonsig's Francois-Jacques Malan with their Kaapse Vonkel Brut Rosé MCC 2015 made from 80% Pinotage, the balance being Pinot noir and Pinot meunier. It is delicious and we enjoyed a bottle with friends last night

Lanzerac GM Barend Barnard pours a glass of Lanzerac's new release Chenin blanc, a delicious example of the new direction Lanzerac is taking under the direction of winemaker Wynand Lategan

Wine Concepts MD Michael Bampfield Duggan, the originator and host of the show

Mother and daughter Old Vines team, Irina von Holdt CWM and Francoise Botha. Irina put Chenin back on the map in the early 90s with her Old Vine Chenin in a blue bottle. The varietal does so many things so well that it was abused, disrespected and neglected. Irina saved some wonderful old vineyards from destruction and started the resurgence of Chenin as South Africa's flagship white grape

Creamy mussels and vegetables, always a great partner for Chenin

Keelyn Gibbons from Mulderbosch with the superb Mulderbosch Steen op Hout

Emma Borg with her Painted Wolf range. A percentage of the money earned from the sale of these wines goes to an Endangered Wildlife Trust research programme for the conservation of the endangered African wild dog (Lycaon Pictus or Painted wolf). Delicious wines with a mission

Mini hamburgers to line the stomach and ease hunger pangs

Remhoogte's range includes one of Lynne's favourite Chenins, Honeybush Chenin blanc, rich, full and, as the name says, honeyed with a touch of botrytis

Diaan van Zyl and Cellarmaster Chris Boustred of Remhoogte

Allee Bleue wines shown by Carol Maggs and Brian Smith

A new range of wines from Antebellum in the Swartland. The eponymous flavour of the Petrolhead suggested a bit of Weisser Riesling in the blend

Bellingham cellarmaster Niel Groenewald pours a glass of the Bernard Series Old Vine Chenin blanc. Hints of apple an citrus with a little toasty vanilla. Made by a winemaker with a great understanding of balanced flavours

A mild vegetable curry served by The Vineyard. Pinotage is a great match for spicy foods

Michele Stewart and Andrea Erwee showed the Fable Mountain wines from Tulbagh

The Fable Mountain Jackal Bird white blend comprises 41% Chenin Blanc, 18% Grenache Blanc; 17% Chardonnay 14% Viognier; and 10% Roussanne. Complex and full-flavoured

More spicy food to match the Pinotage: a small bobotie

Mandy and Jeremy Walker of Grangehurst discuss their iconic Pinotage with Kevin Gleeson. A touch (10%) of Cabernet sauvignon adds a serious dimension

Sushi with a splash of soy. Just the thing to go with a glass of Chenin

Karen Steytler of Kaapzicht showed their comprehensive range of Chenins and Pinotages. The Kaapzicht Kliprug Chenin Blanc 2015 (from the 1947 vineyard) is elegant with a full complex nose and is crisp and dry on the palate. Sadly, the excellent flagship Steytler Pinotage is sold out, but the quality of the Kaapzicht wines always makes a great impression

Jon Meinking of I Shot Images caught in the act of photographing Barend Barnard

Longridge's lovely Chenins relaxing in a bath of Pinotage (someone spilled a bottle). The Longridge 2014 Chenin Blanc has lots of wood on the palate which should become less evident after a couple of years

Lynne bought a case of each of the two wines that impressed her the most: Stofberg's Mia Chenin Blanc 2016 from Rawsonville is tongue tingling, exciting and the Migliarina 2015 Chenin Blanc has an elegant, smooth, full mouth feel and a long, long end. She was also impressed with the Wild Ferment Chenin Blanc from Delheim, full and rich and long. The Mulderbosch Steen op Hout, made by Adam Mason, is rich and complex and his own Marvelous is full of apples and pears. A new farm for us was Wildehurst. Their 2015 Chenin Blanc with white peach and pear and a touch of salt evolves as you taste it

Ginny Povall's Botanica 2014 Chenin (a Platter 5 star) has a perfect acid fruit balance with a note of honey on the end. Rijks Reserve Chenin 2013 from old vines is concentrated and full, with honey notes as well. It always impresses us and the winemaker, Pierre Wahl is, deservedly, current Diners Club Winemaker of the Year

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Wednesday, March 22, 2017

This Week's MENU. Tasting at De Morgenzon, Birthday lunch at Jordan, Zin and Gin invitation from Blaauwklippen, SA Chenin and Pinotage tasting, Recipe of the week - Green Gazpacho, Wine of the week - De Morgenzon Grenache

A lotus flower and seed pods, De Morgenzon wine estate, Stellenboschkloof

A fairly quiet but interesting week. A lot of our time has been spent with friends, but we have two great restaurant experiences for you and a visit to a beautiful farm with excellent wines. Please read on...

A tasting and walk in the gardens at De Morgenzon
A birthday lunch at Jordan
Zin and Gin invitation from Blaauwklippen
Do you love SA Chenin and Pinotage?
Recipe of the week, Green Gazpacho
Wine of the week. De Morgenzon Grenache

A tasting and a walk in the gardens at De Morgenzon On the way to lunch at Jordan our friends asked to revisit De Morgenzon. They loved the tasting they did there last year and are in awe at the gardens and the featured vineyard where Baroque music soothes the vines

A birthday lunch at Jordan This has become an annual event, as our friends from Holland just love having lunch at this restaurant on Peter's birthday, which occurs while they are here for two months. We are huge fans of George Jardine's food, so we too always enjoy the day

Zin and Gin invitation from Blaauwklippen Blaauwklippen in Stellenbosch is famous for producing Zinfandel. Once a year, they allow the media to taste one of their iterations of this interesting grape. This year, the 10th Blaauwklippen tasting, it was a vertical of the sweet Noble Late Harvest from 2007 to 2014. Blaauwklippen have also been making Brandy, Eau de Vie & Grappa for several years; now they have ventured into Gin, which is currently undergoing a huge renaissance in South Africa and abroad. The tasting was held at the Cape Grace Hotel this year. We began with the tasting of 8 wines, and ended a lovely meal with a taste of the gin

Do you love SA Chenin and Pinotage? Mike Duggan of Wine Concepts will host another great wine show this Friday, 24th March, where he will showcase some great South African Chenin Blancs and top Pinotages. It will be at the Vineyard Hotel from 5 till 8 pm. We will be there, so we hope to see many of you. Tickets (R200) can be purchased via www.webtickets.co.za, at any of the Wine Concepts branches or at the door on the evening subject to availability

Recipe of the week, Green Gazpacho

Lynne has done quite a lot of cooking for our visitors over the last few weeks and has tried out some new recipes and some old favourites.

Last week, we were served Ottolenghi's Green Gazpacho in McGregor. This week, Lynne found the recipe, made some adjustments and this is what we had as a starter for dinner last night. Lynne halved this recipe, so it does make a lot. She used a liquidiser. You might need to make this in batches unless you have a very large liquidiser. It does sound like a lot of ingredients, but once you liquidise it, it is made. So easy after assembly. It is based on a Turkish Tarrator. You can use other nuts, like walnuts (in the original recipe), or ground almonds if you don't have blanched fresh. Lynne took the garlic down to 2 cloves (from 4) as it does show quite prominently. Do add more if you like. It is perfect for the hot muggy weather we are having at the moment

2 celery sticks (including the leaves) - 2 small green peppers, deseeded - 1 peeled cucumber (350g in total) - 3 slices stale white bread (120g in total), crusts removed - 1 fresh green chilli (or less if you don’t want it too hot) - 2 garlic cloves - 1 tsp sugar - 150g blanched almonds - 200g baby spinach - 1 whole peeled ripe avocado - 25g basil leaves - 10g parsley - 4 Tbsp sherry vinegar - 1 cup/225ml olive oil - 40g Greek yoghurt - 450ml iced water - 250g ice cubes - 2 tsp salt (or more according to your taste) - white pepper

How to Make It

Roughly chop up the celery, peppers, cucumbers, bread, chilli and garlic. Place in a blender and add the sugar, almonds, avocado, spinach, basil, parsley, vinegar, oil, yoghurt, most of the water, half the ice cubes, the salt and some white pepper.

Blitz the soup until smooth. Add more water, if needed, to get your preferred consistency. Taste the soup and adjust the seasoning. Refrigerate

Lastly, just before serving, add the remaining ice and pulse once or twice, just to crush it a little. Serve with crusty garlic bread or crisp croutons.

With thanks to Yottam Ottolenghi

Wine of the week. De Morgenzon Grenache

Lynne loved this wine enough to buy it when she tasted it at the farm tasting room last week. We had it at supper last night with a warm aubergine and butternut curry. A perfect match. It is full of wild dark liquorice and rhubarb flavours, some spice, with good wood and tannin for structure. Good aging potential too. It sells for R127 per bottle from the farm. Platter has not reviewed it yet

21st March 2017

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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, please click here to send us a message.

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Tuesday, March 21, 2017

MENU's Recipe of the week. Green Gazpacho

Lynne has done quite a lot of cooking for our visitors over the last few weeks and has tried out some new recipes and some old favourites

Last week, we were served Ottolenghi's Green Gazpacho in McGregor. This week, Lynne found the recipe, made some adjustments and this is what we had as a starter for dinner last night. Lynne halved the recipe for four people, so it does make a lot. She used a liquidiser. You might need to make this in batches, unless you have a very large liquidiser. It does sound like a lot of ingredients, but once you liquidise it, it is made. So easy after assembly. It is based on a Turkish Tarrator. You can use other nuts, like walnuts (in the original recipe), or ground almonds if you don't have blanched fresh. Lynne took the garlic down to 2 cloves (from 4) as it does show quite prominently. Do add more if you like. It is perfect for the hot muggy weather we are having at the moment

Green Gazpacho

2 celery sticks (including the leaves) - 2 small green peppers, deseeded - 1 peeled cucumber (350g in total) - 3 slices stale white bread (120g in total), crusts removed - 1 fresh green chilli (or less if you don’t want it too hot) - 2 garlic cloves - 1 tsp sugar - 150g ground or 150g blanched almonds - 200g baby spinach - 1 whole peeled ripe avocado - 25g basil leaves - 10g parsley - 4 Tbsp sherry vinegar - 1 cup/225ml olive oil - 40g Greek yoghurt - 450ml iced water - 250g ice cubes - 2 tsp salt (or more according to your taste) - white pepper

How to Make It

Blitz the soup until smooth. Add more water, if needed, to get your preferred consistency. Taste the soup and adjust the seasoning.

Lastly, just before serving, add the remaining ice and pulse once or twice, just to crush it a little. Serve with crusty garlic bread or crisp croutons.

With thanks to Yottam Ottolenghi

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MENU's Wine of the week. De Morgenzon Grenache

Lynne loved this wine enough to buy it when she tasted it at the farm's tasting room last week

We had it at supper last night with a warm aubergine and butternut curry. A perfect match. It is full of wild dark liquorice and rhubarb flavours, some spice, with good wood and tannin for structure. Good aging potential too. It sells for R127 per bottle from the farm. Platter has not reviewed it

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Sunday, March 19, 2017

Blaauwklippen Zin & Gin at the Cape Grace

Blaauwklippen in Stellenbosch is famous for making Zinfandel. Once a year they allow the media to taste one of their iterations of this interesting grape. This year, the 10th Blaauwklippen Zinfandel tasting, it was a vertical of the sweet Noble Late Harvest from 2007 to 2014. Blaauwklippen have also been making Brandy, Eau de Vie & Grappa for several years, now they have ventured into Gin, which is currently undergoing a huge renaissance in South Africa and abroad. The tasting was held at the Cape Grace Hotel this year. We began with the tasting of 8 wines, and ended a lovely meal with a taste of the gin

The line up of the NLH Zinfandel

We began with another Zinfandel, their MCC, the Diva. Yeasty brioche, apple hints, with some lemon zest, this is enjoyable and fun

Lots of it on ice

Canapés were served with the Diva. These small choux buns were filled with a fig chutney and a goat’s cheese mousse, so crisp and melt in the mouth

Scallop, served ceviche style on avocado mousse with passion fruit, went so well with the Diva. But Lynne's got whipped away before she could finish it

Small cured salmon twirls on crisp rosti with a Hollandaise sauce. Only saw them once, they were very good

Greg Landman of Country Life wearing his gift from the queen

We take our places for the tasting to begin

Some tasty bits of news?

Cellarmaster Rolf Zeitvogel tells us how these wines began. The grapes in 2004 had very high sugar so he decided "why not try to make a port?" He employed one of SA's top port makers - Danie Malan at Allesverloren in the Swartland - as an advisor and they began. But it didn't go according to plan as a heat wave shrivelled half the grapes and increased the sugars to over 40º Balling, so they were not suitable for port, said Danie Malan. They were fermented on the skins in oak. Rolf decided to make it into a sweet dessert wine and used the fact that the grapes get the Noble Rot, Botrytis cinerea, in some years. Rolf had to convince the Wine and Spirit Board who, at first, rejected it as they ruled that there are no red Noble Late harvests. Rolf eventually persuaded them to adopt Zinfandel into this category. Similar wines are made in California, where much of the world's Zinfandel is grown. Blaauwklippen’s oldest block of Zinfandel was planted by Walter Finlayson in 1982 and these wines come from that original block. They do everything in the vineyard to encourage the Botrytis

Winemaker Narina Cloete, who started at Blaauwklippen last year, tells us about the vintage and how it is made. She took us through the 8 wines

The wines are mainly cranberry in colour except for the 2009, which is much darker. They are very sweet, some having very high residual sugar, in the region of 350 gm/l. We started with the youngest 2014 and worked our way back to 2007. The flavour can vary from Ribena, to cranberry, honey bush tea, cassis and other sweet ripe berries. Some are rather syrupy. There is one standout year, which many people in the room preferred, the 2009, where the wine is much more port like, which made everyone wonder what would have happened had they continued on this path. It has an RS of 190 g/l, the age is beginning to show well as it matures. It has a definite port nose and palate, complexity with a bit of wildness, length and depth of fruit and spice, with hints of nutmeg and cinnamon

Time to go into lunch. We cleansed our palates with another glass of Diva

In the restaurant

The menu

The first course was a small square of tender Confit Pork Belly (not fatty), topped with a large grilled and peeled prawn, on a bed of sweet, spicy, curried pumpkin purée and a mango salsa. This was paired with the White Zinfandel, a good dry wine match for the food; crisp and fruity with citrus and loquats. Most of us wanted another one; this was a very good dish

The main course was tender seared ostrich fillet with a black pepper and coriander seed crust, so like a good steak au poivre. Lynne converted Winnie Bowman to appreciating ostrich steak. It came with a delectable thick, shiny pear & meat jus. Luckily, someone at our table called for more of the sauce. Served with good creamy mashed potato, and a crisp onion streusel for texture, broccoli spears, baby carrots, courgette, mushrooms and onion slivers. Naaaice as they say in SA. The wine paired with this was the 2015 Red Zinfandel, now in a Burgundy bottle with new packaging. Spicy cinnamon on the nose, with red berries and rhubarb and dark licorice, dry tannins, a heavyweight and heady. Perfect for steak

The dessert was made to echo the Gin flavours and was a orange semifreddo, with coffee poached pears, honeycomb, gingerbread crumble fresh orange segments and candied orange zest

And now to taste the new gin

It was served neat, and ice cold. Lots of different layers of aromas and flavours, hot alcohols, and complexity. On the nose, herbal notes, with coriander seed, Eucalypts, wormwood, some quinine bitterness and floral perfume at the end. Citrus flavours abound, juniper is there and then too many to describe. Apparently it has many, many different added ingredients. The makers did a trip from Gariep in Namibia and added some inspirational flavour notes at each of the stops! Lynne added a teaspoon of water and it changed into a much softer drink, with even more flavours and aromas

Michelle Coburn of Taste Magazine enjoying the aromas in the Gin

Michelle Coburn with Seth Shezi at the end of a good meal and tasting

With coffee we were served plates of friandise, poppy seed macarons, guava jellies and the most amazing chocolate and shattery butterscotch bark with added rosemary

The two sisters, Narina Cloete with her sister Nanette, Blaauwklippen’s Hospitality manager

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About us

MENU, our weekly email newsletter, started as an advertising medium for Main Ingredient, our specialist retail grocery business. We opened our Sea Point shop in December 2002 because realised that there was a place in South Africa for a grocer catering to people with sophisticated tastes and needs. We moved the shop on line in 2010, but discontinued it in 2015, having decided that it is time to “retire” and concentrate on our writing, photography and tour guiding. MENU has a wide circulation and is read nationally and internationally.

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