A day in Franschhoek

Our friends, who are visiting from Holland, had requested a trip to Franschhoek, so we had a lovely summer’s day in the country on Monday. We started at Pasch du Plooy’s Dutch East restaurant for some good coffee, as the Dutch like to start their day this way. After five minutes in the shops, the girls were ready to move on. OK, it was a little bit longer and the men had to be patient. Then it was off to JP Colmant for a good taste of his local MCC bubblies. We did see JP briefly and he looks rather exhausted after a very, very busy harvest. Then it was off to show them the beautiful view from Dieu Donné. The menu looked rather tempting, so we opted for a nice table in the shade on the terrace. We had a very enjoyable lunch and then it was off to La Motte to taste and buy some wine there. Next, it was Antonij Rupert’s L’Ormarins Motor museum for the men. The ladies rested themselves on the comfortable sofas and then it was time to drive home

The tasting room at Colmant winery in Franschhoek. We preferred to sit on the terrace outside

We were ably assisted by Schalk Basson, who poured us small glasses of the 3 MCC bubblies. The tasting for four people costs R180

The lunchtime special menu at Roca restaurant on Dieu Donné farm

This restaurant has very, very special views over the entire Franschhoek valley from its shady terrace

Very tender, slow cooked rolled belly of pork with a crispy crackling outer and a very good rich wine jus

Prawn and lemon risotto. There were more prawns hidden inside the risotto

Two of our party ordered the Crispy duck

and one had the ostrich steak and chips

John could not resist the chocolate mousse, which came cleverly ‘wrapped’ in a chocolate space ship.

The soft white chocolate mousse, topped with a strawberry confit, was very sweet and unctuous

Affogato – Ice cream with an espresso coffee which is then poured over the ice cream

The large windows allow a view from inside, which makes this a lovely place to come in cooler weather

Our next call was at La Motte, where only the tasting room is open on a Monday

We tasted through the wines available for tasting and admired the elegance of the tasting room

They provide very good tasting glasses and a fresh roll to clean your palate between wines

The vaulted barrel cellar with lots of excellent La Motte reserve reds to come

Then it was off to the L’Ormarins Motor Museum at Antonij Rupert

This is a 100 year old Model T Ford

One hall has only red cars

Another is dedicated to racing cars

There are several very rare vehicles. This is an Aston Martin DB2/4 from the mid 1950s, with Italian Superleggera coachwork, showing a lot of American influence

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014

Lunch at Dunes, Hout Bay

On Sunday, we had to drive through to Constantia to deliver an order to a client, so we decided to go and have lunch at Dunes in Hout Bay. We have often written about this beach -side cafe restaurant because of its wonderful location, view and rather tempting and simple food. They do really good fish and calamari and, this time, we discovered that they also do good hamburgers. They all go with good draught lager and the wine list isn’t shabby either.

The view from Dunes of Hout Bay beach and Chapman’s Peak

A dozen deep sea oysters from the West Coast cost R18 each. Expensive, but worth it, was the verdict of our two internationally experienced oyster addicts

A light Chicken salad followed for one of the oyster eaters

Crisp calamari with chips and some roasted vegetables. The tartar sauce, sadly, still has too much mustard in it. The calamari was fresh and perfectly cooked

Good beef hamburgers with a creamy peppercorn sauce

Two  gulls eyeing our lunch

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014

Wellington Harvest Festival

Are we festival jaded ? Not after the fun we had at Wellington on Saturday. The festival was held on just three farms and they hosted the other wine farms so if you got to three, and we did, you had the opportunity to taste all the wines of the area. We started with an unofficial visit to Roger Jorgensen’s distillery in Main Street as we had to collect something and then it was off to the first festival venue on Diemersfontein where they had games for the children on the lawn, half an ox roasting on a spit, lots of braaiing and good music and we arrived in time for a good local chicken curry for lunch, Then it was off to what looked like the most popular location, Bosman’s as the ground are huge and there were hundreds of people all enjoying themselves under the oaks, doing wine tastings and eating a selection of good food while listening to famous popular bands. Then we finished the day off at Welbedacht who were also overflowing with people, music and fun.

What a wonderful sight to behold when we reached Diemersfontein. Part of a roasted ox on a spit. We didn’t manage to taste any, as we had lunch in the restaurant, but it looked very tempting indeed.

David Sonnenberg, owner of Diemersfontein, tasting wine with of Reni Hildenbrand of Hildebrand Wines. They are also well known for their olives and olive oil

Children having so much fun with old fashioned games on the lawn. NO, that is not a real hippo charging in the background, just a statue

Ribshack Red were also braaiing amazing looking barbecue sauced ribs and lots were selling, as was the wine

Up on the tasting room terrace, people were getting serious about tasting the wine. There was a special price offer on Thokozani rosé and a box went home with us.

Lots of different bands played in the central courtyard, where you could eat lunch while you listened

and some of the other farms had their tasting tables there. Here is Bouwer Nell from Alkmaar Boutique Wines, whose range of The Old School wines has some interesting names, because of the old school building on his property. Here he is with his red wine entitled The Old School Mistress. Could be a useful present... ? They also have red wines The Old School Master and the Class of 2005 etc

Lunch was a local chicken curry with sambals, and rice topped with crisp poppadoms, presented by Andrew Eichler, who has the restaurant concession on the farm

A range of the excellent Diemersfontein and Thokozani wines for tasting

The restaurant interior

The girl band playing through lunch played very traditional South African music starting with Sarie Marais

Then we entered the gates of Bosman Family Vineyards to see what was going on there

Well organised tables and chairs under a shade canopy and lots of food choices

A wonderful old Chevrolet truck on display

and a quite orderly, but very large, crowd queuing to taste wines of the valley at their different ‘stations’

The convivial James McKenzie of Nabygelegen welcomes us

SO many wines to taste!

Mark Herd sampled those from Bosman Family Vineyards

and we examined the food offerings

Lots of sausages for sale

We then headed off for the third festival venue on Welbedacht, where John and Peter had booked into a tasting of South African Whiskies at 3pm. These are the whiskies they tasted

The tasting was held in Welbedacht’s barrel cellar

and led by Andy Watts, Distell’s master whisky distiller

The line up of Bains and Three Ships Whiskies

Owner of Welbedacht, Schalk Burger senior, and friends. Schalk Junior was playing Rugby in New Zealand, on tour with The Stormers

Handsome Winemaker Tiaan Burger, in full harvest beard, was very welcoming

Proud Pa and son with their range of wines

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014

140314 Main Ingredient's MENU - Competition results, Kleine Zalze MCC, L’Avenir Relaunch, Taj Classic Awards, Ommiberg Festival, Oldenburg, Blaauwklippen Zinfandel, Corder Whites, Baked Gammon

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A Cape White eye takes a bath and gives a Cape Canary a shower

Photographed in the courtyard at Marc’s Restaurant in Paarl

In this week’s MENU:

 Competition results

 Kleine Zalze MCC Launch

 L’Avenir Relaunch Party

 Taj Classic Wine Awards Dinner

 Ommiberg Festival in Paarl

 Oldenburg

 Blaauwklippen Zinfandel Vertical tasting

 Corder White Wines

 Baked Gammon

Another busy week where our livers need recovery time. We hope to see lots of you on Saturday at the Wellington Wine Festival, which is being held over this coming weekend. Next week will be more of the same and we plan to be at the Solms Delta Oesfees on Saturday 22nd too.

This week’s Product menu - Chilli sauces have always done very well for us in the past and we are looking at supplying a very hot Peri Peri sauce which we tasted today. Lynne is going to try some of it on some chicken tonight. Check out our on line shop soon to see what we have. We are still desperately looking for a good replacement for our Prego sauce and hope this supplier can come up with another Prego to go with the Peri Peri, just as good as the one Sense of Taste used to make, which we know you are all missing.

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.

Such Successful Competitions!      Winners of the 10 pairs of Taste of Cape Town Tickets have now been notified and the organisers will contact them direct regarding their tickets. The correct answer was 7.

The five winners of the Entertainer Cape Town competition have also been notified and the organisers will be contacting them directly. The correct answer was 850.

Thank you all for entering – we had a great response and mostly right answers. If you wish to see the list of winners, you are welcome to contact us.

Kleine Zalze MCC Launch     Although we had a sneak peak at this the previous night, it was lovely to taste this again at the official launch at Nikki Booth’s Ottimo Cibo private restaurant. There was a great gathering of media from around the country and we had some lovely food to compliment this elegant wine. Click here to see the event and food

L’Avenir Relaunch Party     This well known Stellenbosch farm with good French Connections has been rather silent over the past year or two and, last Thursday night, they threw an excellent party on the lawns of the farm to relaunch them back into the midst of the vibrant SA wine industry. The party was opened by Antoine Leccia the CEO of Advini Wine Group in France, who are part owners of L’Avenir. The wines were served at stations around the garden and each wine was matched with two dishes, one of French origin and one of South African origin. Not all of the matches worked, some of the food being a little misunderstood by our local chefs (please don’t roast rabbit dry! Casserole it) but some of the matches and the dishes were divine. We particularly raved about the Steak au Poivre versus the Championship Boerewors served with the Classic Reserve Pinotage. This wine is epic, a Pinotage Lynne, (pathologically not a Pinotage fan) would drink anytime of the day or night, could she get her hands on it. And we do have a little. If only all of it could be made this way. It is silky soft and full of deep dark fruit and not one hint of any metallic or rusty flavours or any sweaty leather. Click here to see the pictures and the descriptions

Taj Classic Wine Awards Dinner     Once a year, several fairly eminent French wine trade people come to South Africa and judge the local wines that are entered into this very interesting competition sponsored by the Taj Hotel. We so wish more farms would enter, because there were some huge gaps, especially not enough Chenin blanc, which they say they really appreciated, no viogniers and none of our best white blends, even though the judges say we are making stunning Semillon and not showcasing it enough.

We had a good dinner and each table had a bottle of each of the winning wines to share over dinner, so we had a really great experience with some excellent wines. Many of the winning winemakers had wrested themselves away from a very busy harvest to be there, so it made for a very happy and joyous evening.

Sadly the head judge, Olivier Poussier, (the Best Sommelier in the World competition winner, wine consultant, writer and group sommelier of Lenôtre), seems to dislike our Sauvignons blanc – many of us think perhaps he has not tasted enough of them or the right ones.... He says we don’t have the right terroir and fairly obviously prefers French but really likes those made in Australia and New Zealand where pyrazines are a feature. .. He doesn’t like our pyrazines. Lynne had quite a conversation with him as he left, mostly in French, and he said he had enjoyed the competition very much. Photographs here

Ommiberg Festival in Paarl     So it was up and at ’em again on Sunday and off we went to this revived festival. We started at Spice Route and it was buzzing. But Clare, John’s daughter, had been there three weeks before and she said this was normal. Charles Back has really organised this farm, and his other farms, well. There is so much to see. We started by collecting our glasses, armbands and a slice of onion tart, tasted the new wine they had on offer and then split into two groups: girls to do the chocolate tasting and men to do the beer tasting. After a quick look at the sensational glass factory – sadly no blowing going on while we were there - we set off for Paarl’s Main Road where we believed most of the festival would be happening. It was very, very quiet. We tasted some wines from Painted Wolf at Proviant restaurant and then decided to go to Marc’s Restaurant. We had a lovely lunch, but we were almost the only people there. And this was supposed to be a festival day? Paarl, we think you need to trumpet louder and put on a few more exciting draw cards for people to come to the next festival. After lunch, we again split into two. The lads wanted to taste more wine at Proviant: Mason’s, Black Pearl and Mitred Edge and the girls wanted to go to the market and art exhibition, but it had finished at 3 and they were just too late. Perhaps because there were very few attendees? So we finished at KWV, tasting their new wine, having a lovely chat with Marc Friederich, owner of Marc’s, who said it had been busy there. We ate and enjoyed one of his spicy Mexican chilli tacos. There were several young people listening to the band, there was a petting zoo and tasting as normal inside in the tasting room. We looked at KWV’s stunning art collection, tasted a couple more wines and then it was 5pm and closing time. If you were staying in Paarl over the festival, there were no evening events. Sadly, not a terribly impressive event. Paarl organisers, PLEASE go and see what Robertson does at the Wacky Wine Weekend. Our pictures are here

Oldenburg     Our visit to this wine farm on Tuesday was a first for us. It has also been called Rondekop, after the round hill in the middle of the farm. Oldenburg is owned by Adrian van der Spuy, whose family Trust had owned the farm until he bought it. He is an investment banker who lives in Switzerland and visits regularly. In 2001 on a visit back to the Cape, he tasted nearby Thelema’s 1998 Cabernet and was inspired to buy back the farm from the family trust and start planting good terroir specific grapes. Now, 14 years later, they have a good portfolio of wines, mostly reds. We started the day with a glass of their lovely rich and golden Chenin Blanc and went on to taste the others with lunch. Click here to see the photographs.

Blaauwklippen Zinfandel Vertical tasting     One of the highlights of our year is to be invited to Blaauwklippen for their annual tasting of this lovely spicy wine, a grape too rarely grown in South Africa. Blaauwklippen is one of the best producers and wins awards with this difficult to grow and make, but really rewarding wine. Each year there is a different theme. This year was the first ever vertical tasting of the wines since production started 10 years ago in 2004. It was a blockbuster tasting; we were astounded to see how well all of them have matured and the earliest one is still so fresh and full that we predict another 10 years of life for it. Click here to see the tasting notes and pictures of the tasting and lunch

Corder White Wines     Ian Corder dropped off a couple of his wines for us to taste this week and we took them both to our local Chinese restaurant, Dynasty, last night as John’s brother was visiting from Johannesburg. The Sauvignon Blanc was a very good match for our starters of spring rolls and pot sticker dumplings, as it is definitely a food wine. It is lively and a classic elegant Elgin Sauvignon blanc, a 4½ Star Platter – figgy, crisp and green. The rather dry and perfumey 4 Star Platter Chardonnay was somewhat overtaken by the spicy Chinese food, but might be better with a rich fish dish.

Anniversary dinner     We had our 11^th wedding anniversary on Sunday and invited some friends we have not seen for a very long time. Despite a very busy week, Lynne cooked up a storm on Sunday and we had a lovely fun evening. This week’s recipe is one of the dishes she made. See the dishes Lynne made here. We started with Uitkyk Glass Memoires MCC, a disappointment as the first bottle was corked and the second also slightly tainted. De Morgenzon’s fresh, crisp 2012 Sauvignon blanc came to the rescue, both as apéritif and as accompaniment to the chicken liver pâté and the seafood dishes. Arendsig’s 2009 Shiraz was enjoyed with the gammon and the smoked chicken salad, a delicious partner for both dishes.

Baked Gammon – more of an instruction than a recipe

For years Lynne has boiled her gammon gently in a large pot of apple juice or cider with 3 bay leaves, 1 onion, 1 carrot and 1 stick of celery, adding 5 peppercorns and 5 cloves. She has never really been satisfied with the texture of the ham, despite following instructions to cook it very slowly. This time she ran out of time and stove top space and decided instead to bake the ham in the juice in a sealed Le Creuset pot. It was an amazing success. The gammon ham came from Woolworths and she simply followed their instructions on the pack and substituted the apple juice for their stock. It does add a lovely light fruity flavour but the gammon was as tender as we could ever wish it to be. Lynne than removes the skin and glazes the fat with a mixture of ½ a cup dark brown sugar mixed with 1 T Coleman’s English mustard powder and bakes the ham in the oven for just 20 minutes to set the glaze. She also always surrounds the ham with either tinned pineapple pieces or peaches. Yes, tinned as the syrupy juices mixed with some of the simmering stock make a good gravy. And she puts in a generous splash of whisky.

She made a simple coulis of mango and basil and olive oil for the crayfish we served but our guests all put this on their gammon and raved about it, so that too will now become a standard in our house. The coulis recipe came from Raymond Blanc. You will find it on the Web.

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

14th March 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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