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Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Pinotage on Tap 2018 at Diemersfontein Wine Estate

This lovely festival at Diemersfontein in Wellington was graced with beautiful weather in what had been a rather wet week. We hadn’t attended for a while so accepted the invitation with glee. We parked in a huge flower meadow which had some lovely spring flowers to admire. This is a Moraea vegeta, a member of the Iris family

And several Spiloxene capensis, a star flower

The walk took us up to the family's manor house,

the ‘Groot Huis’, where we could pick up our tickets

Lots of people still arriving

A Selfie place

And we began with a glass of the Diemersfontein Pinotage. Tickets cost R295 per person and included a goodie bag and a glass on arrival. Pinotage and other wines flowed abundantly from the barrels too. All included in the price. This year we would have Freshly Ground on stage with Jesse Clegg as the supporting act

Dry ice cream makers, with unusual flavours

Lots of food vans if you needed some lunch

and, thankfully, some of them took cards

Two smiling ladies on their truck

and things to buy on other stalls

David Sonnenberg, owner of Diemersfontein, meeting guests and enjoying the sunshine

He was about to make his opening speech

People were spreading out their blankets, putting up their chairs and getting out their lunch while listening to the very good bands. Jesse Clegg was playing when we arrived and the main group was the very popular Freshly Ground

Our lunch was Spare ribs, and a Pulled pork bun both with chips

We bought a bottle of Diemersfontein Chenin Blanc to go with it

You could take part in Welly Wanging - throwing a Wellington boot

to see if you could get it into the barrel

The Thokozani stand with its friendly staff, where you could taste some Ovation Spumante

A charity auction happening on stage

It was a large crowd, very well behaved and enjoying the day

Quoits. Ring the bottle!

Crossed swords of marshmallows and strawberries dipped in dark chocolate

Also included in your ticket were the three chocolate fountains,

with mounds of marshmallows and strawberries

You could have as many as you liked. This is the dark chocolate fountain

There were two with milk chocolate

Very generous and very yummy

Freshly Ground on stage

Delivering a glass

and enjoying the day!

Getting in the groove

Dancing with your friends

The Spumante Fairies

Helpful staff

filling the empty glasses

Time to wend our way home along the flowery path to the car park

The Festival and concert continued

and more beautiful spring flowers. These are Morea, otherwise known as the Cape Tulip

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New Chef's Vegan Table at Balducci

Balducci restaurant in the V & A Waterfront now has a Vegan menu, in addition to their normal menu, and we were invited to sample some of it at a media event last week. It seems that there is a growing demand for vegetarian and vegan food in the Cape and, when they introduced it after many requests, they were very encouraged by the uptake. We are not vegetarian or vegan, but we have friends who are and we do enjoy eating this sort of food if it is well made. We are a little anti vegan food masquerading as meat. Be true to yourself, if you crave it, eat it. We met three of the owners of the Slick restaurant group, who joined us for dinner. They also own Balducci Asian Noodle and Sushi Bar, Balthazar, Gibson’s and Walters Grill

We began with three juices: L to R: a very refreshing and satisfying Carrot, ginger, apple and lemon juice; a Sherbet lemonade which has zingy pineapple, apple, lemon, and hint of ginger with a lovely fresh mint finish; and an earthy, raw Beetroot with apple, mint, lemon and cucumber

Fresh bread on the table with a vegan spread - which tasted just like oily margarine. We also found good olive oil and balsamic on the table which always goes well with bread

Slick Group Beverage Manager André Naude pours the first wine. We were served the Elgin Ridge 282 2016 Sauvignon Blanc, which is certified organic and biodynamic. It’s a classic, crisp Elgin cool country Sauvignon Blanc, some sesame and herbal notes on the nose, with pineapple and lean limes on the palate, with a long finish

The menu for the evening. You can see the full Vegan menu on line and this is a selection from it. https://balduccis.co.za/balducci-vegan-menu/

Their philosophy

This was on our table and we liked the taste, we thought it was Dukkah. It actually is vegan "parmesan cheese" - non dairy of course.

We had a long table with many guests, some media, others committed vegans and some were both

Our first course, a salad, came in a jar

Beautiful roses and bottles of water

The jar was emptied. It contained a selection of tomato, cucumber, avocado,

peppers, olives, sprouts carrots and leaves. It came with a dressing

The second starter was a rather good falafel with a creamy Tahini

- lots of texture, good flavours. No pita bread was served

We found that the "parmesan" went well with this,

but then we did think it was Dukkah

The third starter was a Trader Joe Pizza, with vegan, dairy free "cheese",

which we believe is made from nuts, and topped with mixed peppers,

raw red onion and a vegan pesto. The base was thin and crisp

It was interesting and enjoyable

The red wine was a 2016 Estate Pinot Noir from Paul Cluver, also an Elgin Wine. Wines approved for drinking by vegans must contain no animal products, nor be fined by egg white or any other non approved addition such as isinglass. Neither of the wines we had was made with the use of any animal products. The Paul Cluver Pinot Noir is deservedly a four and a half star John Platter wine; it has soft red fruit, a good support from delicate use of oak and lovely long flavours of raspberries and other red berries. It is elegant and built to last

The first main course was a penne pasta with smoked mushrooms, marinated tofu and a rather thick cashew nut 'cream' sauce. We found it a bit heavy, but the vegan next to Lynne absolutely loved it and had two or three helpings

A Vegan Red Thai Curry was served next, nice and hot and spicy, it had tofu, bamboo shoots, cauliflower, mushrooms and broccoli and was served with basmati rice. Probably the best dish of the evening. John was not able to eat both of these main courses because of the mushrooms, so the restaurant specially made him some of the pasta without mushrooms

The third main was Smoky Amaranth Black bean sliders. This needs a bit of work, as we found the rather thin bean burgers very dry and it needed a sauce or binder of some sort. It was dressed with pickled cucumber, and lettuce slaw. Bean burgers, we think, need more texture. But we must point out that many of the vegans present liked these. The supporting dish of crisp, sweet potato fries was a winner, loved by all those who appreciate good sweet potatoes.

Two desserts. Described as a Chia Parfait Glass, the coconut milk "yoghurt" had, for us, a rather sour fermented taste - more like a Kefir than a creamy yogurt - fresh strawberries and was sprinkled with chia seeds. Again, our tastes differ; the vegan next to Lynne absolutely loved this dish. The fermentation did rather continue overnight for both of us. The second dessert, the tiny heart of "Cheesecake", made from more cashew nuts and blueberries, had good flavour and was dense and rich. It was on a seed base, rather like the Banting biscuits. Vegans use a lot of nuts and seeds. An interesting meal. If you are vegetarian or vegan, you definitely need to go and sample these dishes. Do let us know how you found it

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Friday, September 07, 2018

This Week’s MENU. SA Young Wine Awards, John Collins Trade tasting, ABSA Cape Blend Awards, Duncan Savage's new Vintages, Chenin Blanc Top 10, Onion Flan, Villiera 2016 Monro Merlot

Watching the winter waves

We wish all our Jewish friends everything of the best

for Rosh Hashanah and well over The Fast

We don’t want this to become a habit. So many stories to tell and an invitation to dinner on Thursday night means a delay in sending out MENU to our subscribers. Especially when we have Telkom here disconnecting our internet while they upgrade our phone connection. Fibre connection is not far away. Thank you to those of you who wrote to us last week to say that they don’t mind if we are late, just as long as we send MENU to you. So here it is and we hope that you’ll find the articles interesting. Thank you for your patience and we hope you’ll enjoy the stories…

The South African Young Wine Awards

were presented in the Stellenbosch Town Hall this year. It is the oldest wine competition in the world having been started in 1833. It is always interesting to taste these wines in their very raw state and so, during the afternoon, preceding the award gala, we were invited to a hall at The Markotter Sports Centre at the Paul Roos Gymnasium in Stellenbosch to taste the finalists. It can be quite heavy going as most of these are tank samples not yet ready for bottling. The judges must be able to see where a wine might go and what it might become at this early stage. You need a lot of experience in the industry to do this….

The Annual Trade tasting of John Collins’ list of wines,

held at a favourite venue, Den Anker restaurant in the V&A Waterfront. It was a superb evening of good wines, John represents a very good list of producers….

This year’s Absa Cape Blend Competition Awards,

run by the Pinotage Association, were presented at a lunch at Lanzerac in Stellenbosch. We were invited to taste the top 10 finalists first and then, at lunch, the trophies for the top 5 winners were presented and certificates were presented to the remaining five finalists. A Cape Blend has to contain a minimum of 30% and no more than 70% Pinotage, the other grapes can be any the farms select, which makes this competition very interesting. The event was held in Lanzerac's very smart Cellar Hall….

The launch of Duncan Savage's new Vintages

It’s his 6th vintage release and we dropped in for a taste of them. Duncan already had several trade and media people there when we arrived and the "open door" policy meant the crowd kept changing. It was more formal the following day, when people could make appointments, with a limit on the number of guests. The cellar is not large. Duncan ably kept up the pace giving different people tastings at the same time with great explanations….

The annual Chenin Blanc Association Top 10 Challenge Awards

were presented at Ellerman House in their spectacular wine cellar. The challenge drew 113 wooded and 46 unwooded entries, all tasted blind by the five-member panel, with 27 wines shortlisted for the final top ten line-up. To quote Ken Forrester, chairman of the Chenin Blanc Association: "Chenin Blanc has come of age. The versatility of Chenin, its diversity of wine styles and its great food-friendliness, all point towards its rising acceptance among local consumers. This is in line with the growing international interest in the grape, increasingly seen abroad as South Africa’s calling card”. South Africa has more Chenin Blanc under vine….

On the MENU this week. Onion Flan

For a prettier photograph, Lynne scattered a sprinkling of rosemary flowers and thyme

Lynne needed something good to eat for our Wine Club meeting this week, but didn’t have any time to go to the supermarket, it has been so hectic. So it had to be from the store cupboard. There was a roll of cheese and herb pastry in the freezer, she had cream from Sunday lunch. We always have eggs and lots of onions. So this was easy and quick. See the whole recipe here

MENU’S Wine of the Week. Villiera 2016 Monro Merlot

We tasted this again at a very special dinner with the Grier family which we will write about next week and it so impressed us, that it has to be our Wine of the Week. South Africa is not known for its Merlots, we grow many in the wrong areas, we often pick the grapes too early and the wines can be tough and harsh. But when they are made carefully and well they are just beautiful. It is said to be a feminine grape and a wine that women prefer. We think this will impress both sexes. Monro is their Prestige reserve wine label. More….

7th September 2018

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

Postal address: 60 Arthurs Rd, Sea Point 8005

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

On the MENU this week. Onion Flan

Roll the pastry out when defrosted and cover the base of a greased 21/22 cm quiche/flan tin. Crimp the edges and keep in the fridge while you make the filling

1 roll of shop bought shortcrust pastry - 4 large onions, peeled and sliced – 50g butter – 1 bay leaf, preferably fresh - a grating or 2 of nutmeg – sea salt and pepper – 2 eggs – 275ml cream

Melt the butter in a large heavy bottomed pan. Add the onions and a liberal pinch of salt. Gently cook the onions, covered with a greaseproof paper cartouche, until they are quite soft and golden brown, stirring gently once or twice to prevent them sticking – do NOT fry them. They will caramelise in their own juices and be quite sweet and begin to break up. This will take about half an hour. Taste and then season with black pepper, nutmeg and more salt if necessary. Mix the eggs with the cream and beat them gently. Cool the onions, remove the cartouche and the bay leaf, then stir in the egg mixture. Pour into the pastry, place on a baking sheet and bake in a hot oven at 200ºC for 30 minutes. It should still have a little wobble in the centre. Serve hot or cold with a crisp green salad

To make a cartouche. Cut a square of greaseproof paper that will cover your pan surface. Fold it in half, then again and then again, and again till you have a sharp wedge of paper. Put the tip in the centre of the pan and tear off the wide edge so that it comes just over the edge of the pan. Open it up and you will have a circle that fits loosely over the onions in the pan. You don’t need to push it down, just so that it keeps the moisture in the onions

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MENU’S Wine of the Week. Villiera 2016 Monro Merlot

We tasted this again at a very special dinner with the Grier family which we will write about next week, and it so impressed us that it has to be our Wine of the Week. South Africa is not known for its Merlots; we grow many in the wrong areas, we often pick the grapes too early and the wines can be tough and harsh. But when they are made carefully and well, they are just beautiful. It is said to be a feminine grape and a wine that women prefer. We think this will impress both sexes. Monro is their Prestige reserve wine label

Made by Jeff Grier, the wine so reminded us of good St Emilion, lots of black cherries and incense wood, with minerality and elegance. Richness is their signature on red wines; this is lovely velvety, berry wine with good integrated wood, ripe cherries and cassis berries, milk chocolate and not a single hint of greenness. Long deep flavours of red plums follow with a little salty liquorice and some nice chalky tannins. This wine calls out for food

Around R200 on the farm

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