Graham Beck Blanc de Blanc vertical + Gorgeous launch at The 12 Apostles

If we have a preference when drinking Champagne and MCC we veer towards a crisper, even Brut Sauvage style, and older vintages so it was great to be able to taste 5 vintages of Graham Beck Blanc de Blanc with Pieter Bubbles Ferriera last Friday. We tasted backward from the 2010 to the 2006 which was our favourite and is so lively, perfumed with crisp mousse and full of limes, lemons, amami and leesy with a long finish.  Some are still in transition, all are worth drinking now and in the future.

The event was held at the 12 Apostles Hotel and after the tasting we were treated to a very good lunch where they announced the release of a new Graham Beck wine Gorgeous, a pale pink blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay full of peachy citrus,  in some very funky packaging. The exclamation was a favourite term of endearment by the late Graham Beck.  It is going to be in the R60 price bracket from the farm.

Use second one

Lots of delicious fresh tasting canapés were on offer: seared tuna in soy, wasabi beef tartar and a vegetarian goats cheese and capponata filo basket served with a welcoming glass of Graham Beck Brut NV

We assembled in the Conservatory on rather a wet day.

The tasting room

We assemble

Pieter Bubbles Ferreira introduces the tasting and tells us a few new facts about Sparkling wines and Graham Beck. They sell one million bottles of Methode Cap Classique sparkling wines every year, here and abroad. Very impressive

Pieter takes us through the wines. He has now spent 30 years in the South African wine industry.

These shoes  Pieter was wearing are wowing the fashion world. Made from an Nguni cow hide, the Americans want to import some.  Several of us fancied a pair

Maryna Strachan of Wine Extra paying attention

Marguerite Nel pouring out the different vintages

Helped by Sonwabo Giba

The selection of 5 Blancs de Blanc from 2006 to 2010. They are wines of astonishing craftsmanship

Golden colours, golden tastes

Nice temperature too

The first taste is always the most exciting

Nevah!

And then he said....

Kerry Kirby of Graham Beck, Anel Grobler of Spit or Swallow and Mari Vigar of La Mouette Restaurant in Sea Point

Time to move into the function venue for lunch. Bottles ready for pouring

Where shall we sit?

No shortage of wine then

TA DA! Introducing Gorgeous, a blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay

Yes, this size please for summer

These versatile gift boxes can be used for birthdays, Valentines,first dates and seduction or just saying "thanks"

Gorgeous was a perfect match for the beautifully cooked flame grilled salmon trout with salmon caviar

Next came a perfect prawn and apple salad with an airy apple marshmallow cloud. An inspired match. Served with Brut Zero 2008

A single goats cheese tortellini on a tomato chutney, with basil pesto and topped with a parmesan foam. Lovely layers of flavour to go with one of our  favourites, Brut Rosé 2009

Fried potato gnocchi on a super smooth corn velouté with popcorn and roasted shallots matched to Brut Rosé NV

PRO Nicolette Waterford, Nelia Vivier of Get It Magazine and Greg Landman of Country Life magazine having fun

Slightly dry roast Chicken roulade with golden vegetables and a rather sweet raisin jus with Cuvée Clive 2009

Nelia with Pieter

Dessert was a butterscotch mousse with a praline ice cream with a glass of Bliss Demi Sec, their sweeter bubbly

And we finished with petit fours and coffee. A lovely light meal with lots of textures and different taste, very well matched to the wines

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014

Cape Winemakers' Guild Tasting at the CT Iinternational Convention Centre

Once a year the Cape Winemakers Guild holds an auction of their member’s wines. This year it will be held on Saturday, October 4th at Spier. If you are a serious wine buyer, this might be the place for you to stock up your cellar with some of the best wines currently available in South Africa. We tasted 42 excellent wines at the sit down guided tasting, which is fast and furious. And there were another 19 for tasting informally after that. There are some gems coming up this year in the auction, many of which we will be tempted to bid for, but we hope that some will fit our budget. We will be attending for the first time as we no longer work on Saturdays. You can look at the catalogue on the CWG website http://www.capewinemakersguild.com/auction/

We then attended the public tasting that evening, where we could taste previous and current wines entered into the auction and chat with the winemakers. A silent auction is always held at this evening tasting, of past Auction wines donated and signed by the winemakers and we try to bid for some wine, with varying success! This year all we managed to secure was a bottle of Nitida 2004 Select Shiraz. The money bid in this auction goes to support bursaries for talented young wine students to study further both here and abroad, a worthy cause indeed. One way to support our industry.

A welcome drink with Kevin Arnold of Waterford Wines and Caroline Rillema

Having a laugh with Sandra Engelen, Shanté Hutton, and a bent over double Niels Verburg of Luddite wines

The support team from Nitida: Winemaker Brendan Butler and Manager Jacus Marais. Cellarmaster Bernhard Veller has entered a very beautiful Bordeaux blend called Gambit 2012 which we scored very highly. This could be another Birthday wine from Nitida

Charles Hopkins talking about his wine, a wooded Sauvignon Blanc. Membership of CWG is by invitation, and is extended to winemakers recognised for their high standards of craftsmanship, who have been responsible for producing outstanding wines for a minimum of five years and are actively involved in operations in the cellar from harvest to bottling.

New member of the CWG Andrea Mullineux introduces her wine for the first time. It was an interesting Semillon Gris made from 55 year old vines found in the Paardeberg area

Peter Finlayson of Bouchard Finlayson presents another great Pinot Noir from the Hemel and Aarde

Kevin Arnold introducing the Waterford CWG 2BB 2009 which is an absolutely classic Bordeaux blend

Abri Beeslaar of Kanonkop discusses the CWG Paul Sauer 2011

Members of the trade and media and other winemakers tasting and listening intently.

Mike Bampfield Duggan and Michael Olivier having fun

Carl Schultz has entered a Hartenberg CWG Auction Shiraz 2011. It is a fruit bomb, beautifully made, with layers of ripe fruit and spices

Neil Proudfoot of Wine Concepts chatting to Kevin Grant, whose Ataraxia Under the Gavel Chardonnay is bound to do well at the auction

Francois Joubert of Asara chatting to Beyers Truter, who predictably has a Pinotage in the auction called Traildust 2012

Francois Naude and Donald Keys of Uncork South Africa

Francois Naude with Christine Rudman and Carl Schulz

Then it was time for the Public tasting downstairs at CTICC

 The Vineyard Hotel meets the Taj! Michael Pownall GM of the Taj chatting to Roy Davies, GM of the Vineyard with Matt Dietchmann, their Food and Beverage Manager. All are planning to be at the auction

Norma Ratcliffe of Warwick Wines, puts a bid or two on the silent auction. Money from this and other auctions goes to the Guild Development Trust. Have a look at their Website to see where the money is going: http://www.capewinemakersguild.com/development-trust and the Protégé programme

Teddy Hall and his wife Doreen

Rianie Strydom

Avid tasters on the Kaapzicht stand talk to Danie Steytler jnr

Guild members David Finlayson of Edgebaston (current Guild Treasurer) and Duncan Savage of Cape Point Wines, having fun

The team from the Cederberg: Pieter du Toit and David Nieuwoudt. David has a Ghost Corner Semillon 2013 and the Teen die Hoog Shiraz 2012 in the auction. Always worth bidding for

Taking bids on the silent auction

David Finlayson with Andrea and Chris Mullineux

Two Auction wines from Andries Burger at Paul Cluver. Andries is currently President of the CWG

The Paul Cluver crew: Paul Cluver Junior, Mullineux Marketing manager Nicola Tipping and Andries Burger

 The ineffable Bartho Eksteen of Hermanuspietersfontein

Bernhard Veller of Nitida chatting to Suné Eksteen

The end of the evening: “You paid HOW MUCH for Bernhard’s wine in the Silent Auction?” Lynne is just pleased she got it. It is for a worthy cause

Then it was off to a very smoky Dias Tavern for some real Portuguese food to help soak up all that glorious wine. Whatever happened to their glassed in smokers section to keep the rest of us away from it?

They seem to be sailing away from the Cape!? Thought they claimed to discover it?

Oh boy were those eyes too big for the stomach. A menu combo: Crisp calamari rings, a small (?) helping of trichado – steak in a garlic, chilli and red wine sauce and YES, real crisp chips. Banting out the window today, its a necessity sometimes

John’s Trinchado and note, a refreshing ale to counter the wine acids.

There was some very very loud music from the band, bass to the fore and some lang arm dancing. Reminder to ourselves. “Go Monday to Wednesday, no band then.”

Dias is well known in the wine trade which is why we encountered Wim Braak with a friend and Morne de Villiers

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014

140821 Main Ingredient's MENU, Societi Bistro, Wellington weekend

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The freedom of the skies

In this week’s MENU:

 Birthday at Societi Bistro

 Photography – a Rant

 A Wellington Weekend

 Food and wine (and a few other) events for you to enjoy

 Learn about wine and cooking

To get the whole of our story, please click on “READ ON.....” at the end of each paragraph, which will lead you to the related blog, with pictures and more words. At the end of each blog, click on RETURN TO MENU to come back to the blog version of MENU.

This week’s Product menu – Like many of you, we are enjoying Rick Stein’s series about Indian food. Naturally, spices are essential ingredients of Indian cooking. Not all the spices you will need are easily available in supermarkets, but we can give you access to them and to other essential ingredients like rose water. See them all here

Birthday at Societi Bistro      Where to celebrate Lynne’s Birthday? We knew, after our busy week, that we were going to be extra busy on Thursday - writing and editing MENU and processing photographs. So we couldn’t go out of town. We attended a function at Societi recently and were extremely impressed with the food. It had been rather a long time since we last ate there. They had a table and off we went. It was buzzing and is obviously one of Cape Town’s most popular restaurants. They run monthly specials featuring French regional food and you can mix these in with courses off the blackboard menu. It turned out to be a very funny and enjoyable evening, with a surprise ending. READ ON....

Photography – a Rant      John is a professional photographer, he has been all his working life. He has had his own studio, specialising in car photography as well as cosmetics and a variety of other consumer products. He spent four years in London and Norway studying photography at one of the best photographic schools in the world, the Polytechnic in London, now the University of Westminster. He does it professionally and he does it for pleasure and many of you comment on how much you like his photographs. We take photographs for MENU at restaurants, functions and wine farms. Sometimes we are asked if the people involved can use them.

There is a school of people who think (erroneously) that it is the camera that takes the photograph. It does not. It is the photographer and a good photographer can take a prize winning photograph using a pin hole camera, a box brownie or a very expensive Hasselblad that most people would struggle to use. It is an art getting people and places into the right light and composition and making it all look effortless. And after you have taken the photograph, there is a great deal of work to be done in balancing light, tone, shade, cropping the picture and many other technical things you may possibly never have heard nor thought about.

So why am I fuming? Because we have attended several functions lately where the organisers have asked for some of the photographs, because they didn’t employ a “professional”. Photos which we took to use in MENU, this e-publication, which goes to thousands of readers every week. In each case, John sent the photos and a bill. A very small one, given the amount of work involved. We received replies which thanked him but expressed surprise at being asked for money.

And these were from ‘professional’ PR and commercial people. Our time and talents don’t come without a price, we all have to earn a living. From Lynne, whose grandfather was a pioneering professional Fleet Street photographer.

A Wellington Weekend      You may recall that we were invited to Dunstone House in April to stay and we wrote about it in MENU. We like it very much and when we heard about their winter special, which runs from April to end of August each year, we thought we would take members of our wine club to stay for a Saturday and that would give us all an opportunity to explore Wellington wines. We had a group of keen travelling companions and were surprised that several of them had never been to Wellington before. It is only one hour from Cape Town and is a very beautiful and hospitable valley.

We started the weekend by meeting at Klein Optenhorst to see the Ferreiras’ magnificent garden and taste some of their newly released Pinot Noir MCC, grown on the farm but vinified by Peter Ferreira, who is not related to Naas Ferreira but to Jenny, his wife, the gardener.

Nabygelegen Then it was on to see James McKenzie at Nabygelegen, just down the road. James and his partner Adele gave us a superb tasting of his wines and they laid on a very good cheese and meat platter for lunch which cost R80 pp.

Dunstone We were not moving far on our first day in the valley as Dunstone is also just the other side of the Bovlei Road from Nabygelegen. We arrived a little weary to be welcomed by tea and cake and then everyone went off to their rooms for a rest, a sunbath, a walk or a read. We all met later for supper at their Restaurant, The Stone Kitchen.

Roger Jørgensen was next on Sunday morning. While our group knows quite a lot about wine and winemaking, most of us are not very au fait with the making of spirits and it was a treat to have Roger take us through the processes he uses and then a trip into his garden and workroom to smell all the aromatics, botanicals and other ingredients that he uses in the making of his brandy, gin, akvavit, and other interesting alcohols.

Because we had spent so much time at Jørgensen’s, we were woefully late for the appointment John had made at Bosman Family Vineyards but Bea, who runs their tasting room, was very good about it and gave us a good tasting of their ranges of wines in the old cellar. Sincere apologies from us all.

Then it was off to Diemersfontein for a tasting and lunch. As the day was so balmy we were able to sit out on the terrace and do our tasting at the same table we later had lunch at. David Sonnenberg came to welcome the group and answer any questions we had. He kindly invited us all to come and see the manor house and gardens after lunch, but sadly that took rather a long time to arrive so we didn’t manage to get there. Perhaps next visit. Photos of the weekend can be seen here

ENTER AND WIN     Excelsior wine estate is celebrating 100 years of hospitality at Excelsior Manor Guesthouse - on a working wine farm in Robertson – this month and they are giving away 100 cases of Excelsior wine in celebration! Enter here to stand the chance of winning 1 of 3 cases of wine daily! Until 31st August. So do it now! All entries stand a chance to win the Grand Prize of an all-inclusive 2-night stay at 4 Star Excelsior Manor for you and a friend. The competition is open to South African residents only.

Food and wine (and a few other) events for you to enjoy

There is a huge and rapidly growing variety of interesting things to occupy your leisure time here in the Western Cape. There are so many interesting things to do in our world of food and wine that we have made separate list for each type of event for which we have information. To see what’s happening in our world of food and wine (and a few other cultural events), visit our list of wine and food pairing dinners, list of Special events with wine and/or food connections, list of Wine Shows and Tastings and list of special dinner events. All the events are listed in date order and we have a large number of exciting events to entertain you right through the year. Events outside the Western Cape are listed here.

Learn about wine and cooking We receive a lot of enquiries from people who want to learn more about wine. Cathy Marston and The Cape Wine Academy both run wine education courses, some very serious and others more geared to fun. You can see details of Cathy’s WSET and other courses here and here and the CWA courses here. Karen Glanfield has taken over the UnWined wine appreciation courses from Cathy. See the details here

The Hurst Campus, an accredited school for people who want to become professional chefs, will soon start a new series of short courses in baking. Check the ad in our blog page or see the details here

Chez Gourmet in Claremont has a programme of cooking classes. A calendar of their classes can be seen here.

In addition to the new Sense of Taste Culinary Arts School, Chef Peter Ayub runs a four module course for keen home cooks at his Maitland complex. Details here

Nadège Lepoittevin-Dasse has French cooking classes in Noordhoek and conducts cooking tours to Normandy. You can see more details here.

Emma Freddi runs the Enrica Rocca cooking courses at her home in Constantia.

Brett Nussey’s Stir Crazy courses are now being run from Dish Food and Social’s premises in Main Road Observatory (opposite Groote Schuur hospital).

Lynn Angel runs the Kitchen Angel cooking school and does private dinners at her home. She holds hands-on cooking classes for small groups on Monday and Thursday evenings and she has decided to introduce LCHF (Banting classes). The Kitchen Confidence classes, which focus on essential cooking skills and methods, have been expanded and are now taught over 2 evenings. She continues to host private dining and culinary team building events at her home. She trained with Raymond Blanc, and has been a professional chef for 25 years. More info here

21st August 2014

Remember - if you can’t find something, we’ll do our best to get it for you, and, if you’re in Cape Town or elsewhere in the country, we can send it to you! Check our online shop for details and prices.

PS If a word or name is in bold type and underlined, click on it for more information

Phones: +27 21 439 3169 / 083 229 1172 / 083 656 4169

Postal address: 60 Arthurs Rd, Sea Point 8005

Our Adamastor & Bacchus© tailor-made Wine, Food and Photo tours take small groups (up to 6) to specialist wine producers who make the best of South Africa’s wines. Have fun while you learn more about wine and how it is made! Tours can be conducted in English, German, Norwegian and standard or Dutch-flavoured Afrikaans.

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. Our Avast! ^® Anti-Virus software is updated at least daily and our system is scanned continually for viruses.

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Lunch at Diemersfontein

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014