Muratie Harvest Festival

Some of our wine farms radiate the expense of money and sophistication and lots of bling. At others you can see reality, the long history and tradition marked on all their walls, echoed in their wines and carried on by their owners and staff. Muratie is one of the latter and we love her for it. So missing her Harvest Festival each year is not an option. This took place on the farm last weekend and we had a ball. Read on here and see the photos

First we were welcomed by glasses of their Lady Alice MCC

Then it was time to have a vertical tasting of three of their wines in the large cellar room

Owner Rijk Melck tells us about the plans for the farm since the very, very sad and sudden death of their young winemaker Francois Conradie this year.  Francois Haasbroek is assisting them in the harvest and all the staff on the farm are putting their shoulders to the wheel and helping where they can this busy year, as the grapes look fantastic and need to be made into great wine

Then he told us some of the interesting history of the farm in relation to the wine labels and names

We had a vertical tasting of three Muratie wines: Isabella Chardonnay, Ansela van de Caab red blend and the Ronnie Melck Shiraz. These wines are growing in stature all the time and you can see how well they mature when you taste the older wines, whites as well as red

Some happy festival attendees stomping some grapes

Little girls having fun in the sticky mess of grapes and juice

The festival crowd enjoying Muratie wines and lunch under umbrellas and oaks listening to good music and just having a lot of fun

Young and old

Mike Bampfield Duggan

Monika Elias of the South African Wine Tourism Handbook

Our lunch was a whopping beef burger and chips and some killer chilli poppers washed down with Muratie's excellent Rose and their Pinotage

Owner Rijk Melck, also enjoying his Rose

The rock band that entertained us late afternoon

Sad horn

Lively horn

Good barbecue chicken wings

Michelle Stewart and Renee Bampfield Duggan having fun

The most wonderful bunch of healthy grapes we have seen yet this harvest, right in the car park!

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014

The Vineyard Hotel's historic, second Harvest

Everyone knows that journalists stay up late partying and don’t do early mornings.  Not true.  Once again this summer we were up and at the Vineyard Hotel by 7am to take part in the historic second harvest of the grapes from their small vineyard in the gardens on the side of the Liesbeek river.

Welcomed by a great glass of bubbly and some orange juice to take the motes from our eyes

We marvelled at the amount of good healthy and ripe grapes this year. Obviously affected by the long wet winter and the nice warm summer days we have been having. The grapes had to be netted to prevent the birds from decimating the crop

Last year we had precisely one bunch of grapes on our vine, this year there were at least 20

Mike Bampfield Duggan of Wine Concepts with his vine

General Manager of the Hotel Roy Davies and Food and Beverage Manager Matt Dietchmann were there to shepherd us through the picking

Brian Cluver from Warwick helps Mike remove the nets so we can all get picking and in the background Norma Ratcliffe and Lynne remove the clips that tie the netting down

Norma Ratcliffe, who will be making the wine this year for the Vineyard, begins the picking; it's backbreaking work, but we didn’t exactly have acres of vines to work on.

Lynne gets down to picking our grapes as well as the rest of the row.

Healthy ripe and sweet Sauvignon Blanc grapes picked from the front rows. At the back of the vineyard there are three rows of Semillon

Norma with the lug boxes full of grapes going off to the press at Warwick

The hotel garden staff help to take the heavy lug boxes to the van, supervised by Warwick’s viticulturist Ronald Spies

Then we were rewarded with a lovely breakfast spread in the restaurant

Lynne and Kitty Petousis, owner of the Vineyard Hotel, trying to make healthy but hungry choices

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014

Colmant Wine & Dine at The Mount Nelson's The Planet Restaurant

We receive lovely invitations and this week it was one to attend the first of the Wine and Dine pairing diners that the Mount Nelson Hotel will be running through the coming year. Click here for the programme. Executive Chef Rudi Liebenberg and Sommelier Pearl Oliver have teamed up with some of the world's most talented winemakers, brew masters and whiskey producers to bring you these delicious gastronomic evenings.

Chef Rudi and Sommelier Pearl Oliver, who invited us, had matched the seven course menu to compliment the MCC sparkling wines of JP Colmant in Franschhoek, plus two champagnes from France, the Follet and the Tribaut, which JP represents in South Africa.

We met Gabi Palmer, the PR Manager of the Nellie (Cape Town’s fond nickname for our Grande Dame of hotels at the top of town), for a pre-dinner drink on the terrace before dinner and enjoyed the lovely summer evening

The garden is at its best at this time of year and well worth a wander

Canapés of fresh West Coast oysters with a tomato salsa greeted the guests. These dinners are extremely good value at R485 per person for a seven course dinner including the canapés and all the wines

and Jean-Philippe Colmant and his fiancée Janine greeted us with a glass of his other French Champagne, Tribaut

Guests getting a refill of this delicious bubbly

We took our seats in the stately Planet restaurant and JP introduced us to his wines

This was the menu for the evening

JP gets a guest to do some Sabrage (opening the bottle with a sword as Napoleon’s Hussars used to do) on a bottle of his bubbly

She was an expert and didn’t spill a drop. To quote Napoleon : "Champagne! In victory one deserves it; in defeat one needs it."

The beautiful central chandelier is a myriad of stars

The scallops were sweet and perfectly cooked and this dish in particular, really highlighted the flavours of the Brut Chardonnay

A novel way of displaying and storing the restaurant’s wine collection

Beautifully cooked, melt in the mouth salmon confit was another great match with the Brut Rosé

A palate cleanser of roasted peach and nectarine sorbet

The duck sausage was the star of this plate, as the breast although perfectly cooked, was a little tough, as we so often find with local duck. The cherries were a lovely counterpoint to the Brut Reserve

The pastry chef tells us how she came up with the dessert to match the wines

Some interesting local goat cheeses went very, very well with the Follet Champagne. We must confess we did not have expectations of a good match, so this was a nice surprise

This rich dessert was decadent beyond belief and after so many rich courses some of us struggled to finish the huge helping of orange flavoured chocolate mousse. Not John of course. We need the recipe for the chocolate sorbet, it was light but dense in dark chocolate flavours without being buttery and claggy. Super little surprises were the paté de fruit – nice intense fruit jellies

It was really nice to see that some of our readers had decided to come to the dinner

A private table in the wine cellar

Sommelier Pearl Oliver, the Mount Nelson’s Executive Chef Rudi Liebenberg, JP Colmant and his fiancé Janine. It was an extremely enjoyable evening

Do investigate the events yet to come, we think you will enjoy them a lot

© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014

  

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014

140227 Main Ingredient's MENU - Festival time, Mexican food, Constantia Fresh, Ommiberg Festival in Paarl, Scansa Trade Day at Durbanville Hills, Banoffee Pie

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Pincushion Protea, Leucospermum

This week’s Product menu - Mexican food is so suitable for hot weather and we do have stock of real Mexican Chipotle Chillies in Adobo sauce to spice up your Nachos or other Mexican meals. The range also has a delicious Chipotle Salsa for dipping into or pouring over and there is a great Black Bean Salsa. Mexicorn are importing these from Mexico and packaging them here. If you can find it in the supermarket, we don't usually stock it, just the products you would struggle to find... Check our online shop to see more details and prices.

Festival time     Harvest festivals are taking place all through March, so you are spoilt for choice as there will be some exciting and different things happening. Check our Events Calendar for the many, many things you can enjoy in the winelands. Most festivals take place over the entire weekend and Robertson has things all through the month of March. This weekend we will be going to the festival at Muratie and on Sunday to Durbanville for the Feast of the Grape. Next weekend will see us at the Paarl Ommiberg on Saturday and on the 15th we will be in Wellington for their Festival. Solms Delta's ATKV Oesfees will happen on Saturday 22nd and we are also going to that.

Constantia Fresh took place on Saturday at Buitenverwachting and was a marvellous festival of good wines and some lovely food. Tickets cost R400 and for that you got to taste all the wines available and eat the food of five chefs. It was hugely popular; there were 950 tickets available and they sold out. We saw people being turned away, so if you want to come next year, buy your tickets in advance. With added guests and media we estimate there were at least 1000 people attending and it never seemed crowded. The festival was spread out on the lawns and there was seating available or you could just sit on the lawn. They also added an antique fair as another facet. Click here to read and see more

Ommiberg Festival in Paarl will take place next weekend, 8th and 9th of March and at last the sleeping dragon underneath the Pearl has awakened! Most farms but not all, are doing many varying events on their farms and in Paarl on both days. On Friday there is a golf day at Paarl Golf club. Most of the farms start you off with a free tasting of their young wines and a slice of onion tart, with the proviso that “While stocks last!” which should encourage you to get there early. Click here to see the full exciting festival programme

We were invited to a media briefing day on Tuesday and were taken to several different venues where they will be holding the festival to see what they have to offer. Click here to read about our day and see what you might experience

Scansa Trade Day at Durbanville Hills     Three Streams Trout Farms in Franschhoek bought Scansa, a large importer of salmon and other products from Europe, a couple of years ago when the owner retired and they have now become one of the largest suppliers of trout and salmon in South Africa. They begin the value chain “from Egg to Plate” with their trout hatcheries in Franschhoek and also in Lesotho and are the largest hatchery in SA providing 1.6 million fingerling trout a year to fish farms. There is now a huge demand for salmon worldwide but we have so overfished the seas that in future most of it will have to be farmed. They are about to do a trial in Saldanha Bay to see if it can be done in our waters. They are major importers of fine quality salmon and other fish products from Scotland and Norway. They also have a BEE company, Cape Trout, and all farms in the Western Cape are being restructured. The chain then moves logically onto the Smokehouse in Franschhoek where 75% of what they produce is for Woolworths and the remainder for their own retail brands Three Streams or Scansa. They also have a very long list with other exciting products. You can taste many of these at the Salmon Bar in Franschhoek. And there is a factory shop in Montague Gardens. We love their products and often buy them and we were delighted to have a small tasting of some lovely Durbanville Hill wines matched with some of their products including the new farmed Kabeljou.

Banoffee Pie     We know you all do a lot of entertaining in summer, despite the hot weather. Lynne though she would give you a simple but delicious recipe which takes very little time or effort to make, as many of the ingredients could come from your store cupboard or a quick trip to a local supermarket. It is that old favourite, Banoffee Pie

1 packet of digestive or other biscuits – 120g melted butter – 3 bananas – half a lemon - 1 tin of Caramel condensed milk, Nestles Treat – 250 ml of whipping cream – optional: 1 t or 2t of whisky – chocolate curls – pecan nuts

Put the biscuits into a food processor and break up to a rough crumb. Or put into a plastic bag and beat with a rolling pin. Put into a bowl and pour over the melted butter and mix well. Take a loose bottomed cake tin approx 20 cm and line with a disc of baking paper. This makes it much easier to cut later. Press the biscuit crumbs firmly onto the base. Then slice the bananas and make two layers of them at the bottom of the pie. Squeeze over a little lemon juice to keep the banana white and to add a little contrast to the very sweet caramel. Pour or spoon on the caramel and cover the bananas. Put into the fridge to set. Just before serving whip the cream and top the pie. You can add a little whisky to the cream if you like and you can sprinkle over some chocolate curls. Some people like to add some nuts to this pie but these are all optional extras and are not traditional. For a dinner party you could make individual pies. Make them in soufflé dishes so they don’t have to be turned out and sliced.  You can make your own caramel by boiling tins of condensed mik for hours, but save the planet's resources and just buy the ready made one.

Buying from us On Line We have a lot of fun putting MENU together each week and, of course, doing the things we write about, but making it possible for you to enjoy rare and wonderful gourmet foods is what drives our business. We stock a good range of ingredients and delicious ready-made gourmet foods. You can contact us by email or phone, or through our on line shop. We can send your requirements to you anywhere in South Africa. Please do not pay until we have confirmed availability and invoiced you, then you pay and then we deliver or post. When you make an eft payment, make sure that it says who you are. Use the form on the website to email us your order. Click here to see our OnLine Shop.

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. 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

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

27th February 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.

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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 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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