MENU visits Vinexpo, Bordeaux

On Sunday we headed from Oléron to Bordeaux, quite early, to be at the start of Vinexpo, which lasted five days. And wonderful, exhausting days they were, walking several miles every day to taste some superb, some OK and frankly just a few really shocking wines. We sampled wines, champagnes and cognacs from France, wines from all over Europe, North and South America, New Zealand and one from Australia (who did not have official representation), and some South African. Our conclusion: You do need to taste wines from all over the world to get wine into perspective, but we know that we produce really good wines in South Africa and this visit confirmed it.

Our car had a TomTom GPS fitted, which made finding our way easy

The scale is immense. Hall 1 is about 1.5 Km long and ± 100m wide

The entrance in Hall 2

 which is bigger than the CTICC

The South African stands were in Hall 3

We started by registering at the media centre

where we were the only SA media representatives

It was a much needed place to sit and rest our weary legs

get some refreshment (good coffee as well)

and catch up on emails

We visited the South African stands

 which, collectively, were dwarfed by the exhibits of countries like Portugal

Their Governments value and give financial help to their wine industries. Ours does not

The fourth hall is a long walk across the lake on a causeway and is where you see accessories, like glasses & corkscrews

The clever man from Gonzalez Byass pouring Tio Pepe Fino sherry from his wine thief

 Pretty flowers along the edge of Hall 1

Small buses and club cars to help weary legs,

especially in the rain

A stand selling wine books - we would have liked to have seen Platter there

Off home after a long day, with a couple of wines for our dinner

Asara winemakers Tanja-Marie Goedhart and Francois Joubert with Lynne at the Chianti stand

 Tasting Portuguese wines with Robert Joseph

 At a tasting of Sauternes wines (we don't often see noble late harvests in magnums!)

 

we ran into Villiera's Jeff Grier, who was representing his French property

 A wine and food pairing at Barton & Guestier

One of the more unusual displays

 and an unusual label for wines from all round the world. The chenin blanc was made by Kleine Zalze

We tasted rosés from Provence, some superb, some barely OK

delicious German wines

 Mexican wines

 

with a Mariachi accompaniment

some good Listrac Medoc and Languedoc

 good Chablis 

good Burgundy

and very bad Burgundy

excellent Pouilly Fumé and Sancerre from Henri Bourgeois

very good Chenins from the Loire 

and some very good South Africans, as we would expect at an international exhibition!

 We wanted to taste Shaoxing rice wine, but they didn't have an open bottle!

Before the show closed, we paid a last visit to the South Africans

 where the WOSA girls were having a bit of fun with a Mexican

Display bottles for disposal - we were warned that they contained any old rubbish

 and tasting bottles, from which one could choose wines to take home

so we did

Read here about the Champagnes and other bubblies and the Cognacs

or RETURN TO MENU
© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2013

15th June 2013 Main Ingredient's MENU - Cape Town to Bordeaux, Charentes, Cognac, Saintes and Oléron, La Rochelle

MENU

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The view from our B&B at Cherac

In this week’s MENU:                                                              

       Flying from Cape Town to Bordeaux

       Chérac and Cognac

       Ile d’Oléron

       La Rochelle

Bordeaux, here we come     This week’s MENU has a different format. Nominally, we are on holiday, but some of our activities are worthy of communicating to you. Most of it is links to blogs, where we will let the pictures tell the story. Click on the links to see it or just catch them at www.adamastorbacchus.blogspot.com or follow us on Twitter, @mainingmenu

On Sunday night, we flew out of Cape Town to Bordeaux via a short stopover at Schipol airport, Amsterdam. It was very tiring, the seats were very uncomfortable in the Boeing, better in the smaller second-leg plane. We picked up our hire car, a diesel Renault Kangoo estate. Highly recommended, it is in the cheapest category - it’s an up-specced van - and has loads of space and all the mod cons we need: a TomTom (invaluable for finding new places) cruise control, air conditioning, very comfortable seats and it’s amazingly quiet and very economical. Diesel here is cheaper than petrol at about €1.27 a litre. We’ve just had to get used to using a clutch again. We had a two hour drive through lovely green countryside with roses everywhere and arrived at about 7.30 at our first B&B, 2 Route du Puits des Brousses in Cherac with hosts Claudy and Alain Caillaud, between the towns of Saintes and Cognac. After supper in a local restaurant, we retired to a much needed bed after being up for more than 37 hours as neither of us could do more than doze on the plane. See more here.

Cognac     Next day, we drove down the road to a small local producer of Cognac and Pineau des Charentes, a sweet fortified wine. After a tasting, we drove through to Cognac, where we visited a couple of markets. The quality of the produce is so much better than anything we see. Everything is fresh and immaculately presented. More here. Then the highlight of our day, a visit to Cognac producer H.Mounier, where we were privileged to taste some very old and special cognacs from the barrel.  They have three websites: www.hmounier.fr    www.polignac.fr     www.reynac.fr . Then via a brief look at Remy Martin, back to Cherac for an al fresco supper of things we bought in the markets.

Saintes is a very pretty town on the River Charente. We visited a very innovative small negociant who buys cognacs of different ages from small producers, bottles and markets them. Guilhem Grosperrin took over his father’s business ten years ago, when he was 23. His father had multiple sclerosis and the business was failing. He is very entrepreneurial and has revived and grown the business. We tasted some superb single vineyard, varietal and very old cognacs. More here.

After this visit, we drove west to the Ile D’Oleron, a largish island linked by a causeway to the mainland where we planned to have a real holiday.  More here.

Next day, we explored more of the island and you can see what we saw here.

Yesterday, we drove to La Rochelle, an ancient town about an hour to the north, which John visited in 1971. We knew that prices in the restaurants round the harbour would be scary – they were – so Lynne made baguette sandwiches for us, which we enjoyed with a beer on the harbour’s edge. After a few hours’ walking round La Rochelle, we returned for a long walk on the beach on the Atlantic side of the island. Pictures here.

Internet access has been sporadic in Oléron and, both here and in Cherac, we have been able to receive emails, but have had difficulty in sending them, so we apologise for any lack of response.

Tomorrow we head back to Bordeaux, quite early, to be at the start of Vinexpo, which lasts five days.

This week’s recipe has taken a couple of weeks’ break, but we are picking up ideas.

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 month 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 Events Calendar. All the events are listed in date order and we already have a large number of exciting events to entertain you right through the year. It will be updated when we return.

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.

Chez Gourmet in Claremont has a programme of cooking classes. We plan to visit their French establishment after Vinexpo. A calendar of their classes can be seen here. Pete Ayub, who makes our very popular Prego sauce, runs evening cooking classes at Sense of Taste, his catering company in Maitland. We can recommend them very highly, having enjoyed his seafood course. Check his programme here. Nadège Lepoittevin-Dasse has cooking classes in Fish Hoek 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 Wednesday evenings. She trained with Raymond Blanc, and has been a professional chef for 25 years. More info here 

15^th June 2013
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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 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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John & Lynne's French odyssey. Day 5: La Rochelle and the Atlantic side of Oléron

The ancient city, La Rochelle is a little more than an hour’s drive north of Ile d’Oléron

We parked near the harbour with its two towers guarding the entrance

and looked at the menus

of some of the restaurants which ring the old harbour

It is a beautiful old city

An interesting display of bottles outside a restaurant

Plenty of souvenir shops

Views from the harbour wall

Fish (small shark?) spawning in the harbour

We had a beer and a sandwich on the harbour wall

and took a walk round the town

The City Hall

A shop selling nothing but tinned fish, beautifully packaged

The tiny back streets are full of small bars, shops and restaurants

Sparrows are everywhere, feasting on the crumbs

Then back to Oléron for a walk on the beach on the Atlantic side

The sand has cross-hatching patterns, which occur naturally

The beach is long and wide with shallow lagoons

Children racing small land yachts

People digging for clams

and a wreck

Then home for a locally brewed dark beer

and supper with the Faugères given to us by Guilhem Grosperrin

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2013