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Thursday, October 02, 2014

Sunday Jazz brunch at the Winchester Mansions

The Sunday Jazz Brunch has become an institution at the Winchester. Every Sunday, throughout the year, you arrive at 11 and stay till 2 and, in the process, listen to jazz, eat breakfast, morning tea and sushi, and then finish with a full Sunday lunch and dessert. And all for a very reasonable charge of R270 per person. They provide a glass of Miss Molly Bubbly to start the morning and the Sunday Papers. The wine list is comprehensive and you can make choices from there

Sunday turned out to be quite a pretty day. Not very sunny but not chilly either. Tables around the fountain. Daughter Clare settling in.

It is a lovely old style hotel, right on the sea front in Sea Point. It was a block of flats back in the 50’s and 60’s

Aaah, the salad bar. Best were the smoked salmon and the prawn dish. Apparently, the mussels were also divine

Very good sushi, which they keep renewing. It's a popular choice

Or you can start with breakfast cereals

and add some fresh fruit and yoghurt

The cheese board

The other side of the salad bar

May we tempt you with some pastries or rolls?

More salads

Fancy a Tricolore salad dressed with pesto?

How Lynne started brunch: a little sushi, salmon, prawns and some calamari. You can then go on to a full Sunday lunch and they had beef, pork, lamb chops, fish, lots of vegetables and roast potatoes. Oh, and very good curry and rice. And then, of course, there is the dessert bar

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Wednesday, October 01, 2014

Seductive Sauvignons with Wine Concepts at The Vineyard

After our hectic couple of days last week, with visits to Avontuur and L’Avenir on Wednesday and Thursday and then Friday’s wonderful lunch at Joostenberg, we had a quick trip home to unpack the car, fetch a friend from Europe who was staying at the Winchester Mansions and hare off to the Vineyard Hotel for Wine Concepts’ Seductive Sauvignons wine show. Were we tired? Hell no, when faced with over 107 wines to taste. Many farms showed both Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon. And there were many seriously good wines to sample. The show was very well attended and Mike Bampfield Duggan told us that they had sold about twice as many tickets as they did for the show last year

One of the highlights of the evening was at the Springfield table. They showed a Methode Ancienne Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 which, for us, was the best wine of the evening. Just what a good Cabernet should be, bright and juicy fruit, silky smooth with nice soft tannins and acid holding it all together and some well integrated wood. A wine to drink with a splendid meal. And this year’s Life from Stone sauvignon blanc is lively and lean and worth buying

Ataraxia Sauvignon Blanc at R102 was a bargain. Kevin Grant has some of his Guild Sauvignon Blanc coming up at the Cape Winemakers Guild auction this weekend and it will go for much, much more. If you can’t afford auction prices, go and buy this. The exact same can be said for David Niewoudt’s Ghost Corner Sauvignon Blanc, very impressive as always

The Iona Sauvignon Blanc is a classic, as is the De Grendel Koetshuis 2014. The Le Riche Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve is quite splendid and will last for years, as it should at R421 a bottle

There were several older sauvignons blanc on show and they showed how well this varietal can develop with a bit of bottle age. Standouts here were Mooiplaas, Domaine des Dieux and Springfield who showed wines with great depth and complexity which were up to seven years old

Natalie Opstaele of Almenkerk with their full-on, tropical nuanced Sauvignon Blanc, which so impressed

Annemie Adriaanse with the wines from Black Oystercatcher

Terry Rodbard with Vineyard Hotel GM Roy Davies

Johan Kruger of Sterhuis, Jenna Bruwer of Springfield and John Collins

Jackie Rabe of Strandveld Vineyards and Trizanne Barnard, who was showing her Trizanne sauvignon blanc

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

New spring menu at Joostenberg - lunch with Susan & Christophe Dehosse

After breakfast at L’Avenir’s Lodge we did some cheese shopping at Parmalat’s Simonsberg cheese factory shop in Stellenbosch and then drove through to Joostenberg, where Susan and Chef Christophe Dehosse had invited us to join them for lunch to try out their new menu in their recently refurbished restaurant. It was lovely to discover that Hartenberg cellarmaster Carl Schultz and his wife Karen had also been invited, as well as co-owner/winemaker Tyrrel Myburgh’s wife Anette. Tyrell was in the USA, marketing their wines. We had a very gemütlich lunch with lovely food, good wine and wonderful company – all the ingredients of a wonderful meal

Enjoying a glass of Joostenberg wine with Christophe and Susan Dehosse

A view of the restaurant before it filled up

Our lunch menu

Banting seed biscuits with Pork Rillons, chick pea and feta dip, aubergine paté and smoked salmon trout tartare were our appetisers.

The rillons were crisp, sticky and moist and superbly flavoured

Carl Schultz, cellarmaster at Hartenberg

The chef, Christophe Dehosse who, like us, is following the Banting regime and is finding it a great success

A seafood nage (broth) with very fresh silverfish and tiny pearl pickled onions. So enjoyable and so redolent of the sea. This is one dish that needs a nice piece of bread to mop up all those juices and sauce, but we resisted.

Long and slow-braised lamb – Christophe cooked this overnight for more than 12 hours - on a herby minty tabbouleh topped with a red pepper compote and a meaty thyme jus

Susan and Carl chatting about the industry

The perfect Dehosse dessert: Properly made vanilla ice cream with no shortcuts, with fresh seasonal strawberries topped with a crisp caramel almond tuille. Might just become a Ford family favourite. “Simple well made food using perfect ingredients is the way to go” says Christophe. Enjoyed with the deliciously golden Joostenberg Noble Late Harvest

Chatting over a bottle of Joostenberg’s wonderful Noble Late Harvest dessert wine, made from Chenin Blanc, after a lovely relaxed lunch. A place to meet your friends and family, eat a good meal and ‘kuier’ (visit)

Christophe’s Chef Garth Bedford,

who cooked our meal so that Christophe could be with us

What we drank with our meal: Joostenberg Family Blend, Joostenberg Fairhead 2011, Joostenberg Syrah 2013 and the Noble Late Harvest. All match the food so well and all are available to drink in the restaurant or to buy in the Deli next door, which has a lovely selection of foods made by Christophe and his team. We really recommend his classic pork pies and his Pork Rillette, amongst many other good things

and, while were having fun, the restaurant had filled up with hungry, happy customers

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Luxury in the Guesthouse at L'Avenir

L’Avenir have wanted us to come and stay at their Lodge for a while and this was the perfect occasion to do so, as driving back to Cape Town after their tour de force wine tasting, which finished rather late, was not an option. We were given one of the best rooms in the Lodge and had a superbly comfortable stay

There is a bright and sparkling pool at the entrance, with lovely views over the lake

A covered verandah for breakfast or just for relaxing on warm days

The rooms are all named after wines. Our room “Grand Vin Pinotage” had a huge bed and a sitting room area, where we were able to work producing MENU on our laptops