Vertical Dombeya chardonnay and shiraz tasting & lunch at Haskell

An invitation last week to Dombeya vineyards to do a blending competition with members of the other media was quite a draw card so we were rather disappointed to discover on arrival that this had been cancelled. It seems it was difficult to organise in the middle of harvest, which is understandable. So instead we had a vertical tasting of five of the Dombeya Chardonnays and then five Dombeya Shirazes. This was followed by lunch at their Long Table

Superb grapes just moments away from harvest

The entrance to the Dombeya cellar and tasting room: This was our first visit to the farm. It is owned by Preston Haskell (the majority shareholder) and it is where they make the Haskell wines

An amusing bit of history: The Dombeya Story*. Cape Town, October, 2005.

Grant “What’s this Dombeya thing?” Preston “That was the original name of the wine farm”. “ Grant “Reckon we should can the name. Run with Haskell. Easier. Less complicated for consumers”. Preston “I like the name”. Grant “But the label has a tree with sheep under it”. Preston “ Dombeya is a tree, and the place has been run as a wool shop for years. And I paid Anthony Lane the GDP of a small African nation for that label”. Grant “ Still reckon we should can it”. Preston “No”. Grant “ Sure you don’t want to think about that?” Preston “ Yes”   *Abbreviated for dramatic effect

Welcomed by a New Zealand Craggy Range Martinborough Sauvignon Blanc, which is imported into SA by Haskell CEO and partner Grant Dodd, who is originally from Australia. It has nice restraint with peas and green pepper, with notes of honey and golden apples and a kick of hot spice on the end

Elbie Booysens in the tasting room

Some canapés to stave off any hunger

Winemaker Rianie Strydom with Samarie Smith

Gathering in the tasting room

We take our places to start the tasting

and begin

Grant Dodd tells us about the five Chardonnays we are about to taste: 2006, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2013. This is the first vertical tasting they have done. The 2006 was very different from the rest, much more approachable due to its age, with a full mouth of smooth silk, limes, warm vanilla and plums with minerality on the end. These wines are built to last. We found that Rianie has developed the Chardonnays to have a steely, quite austere French style; they are crisp and dry with citrus notes, wood & loads of minerality, they need time and go well with food. The current one selling is the 2013 at R95 on the farm.

The five tasting samples

Rianie telling us how she makes the wine

Then it was time for the five Shirazes

Alan Mullins CWM, Cathy van Zyl MW, Winnie Bowman CWM and Melvin Minnaar

Question time

Grant tells us about the Shiraz. We found them spicy, full of warm fruit layers with nice depth and balance. The 2008 especially enchanted us with its plum pudding Christmas notes. It is a full on fruit driven wine with layers of different fruit, but still elegant rather than fully ripe, and has nice notes of oak on the end. We found salty licorice on nearly all and the younger ones do need some time. They decide in the vineyards which grapes are going to the Haskell or the Dombeya. The Dombeya Boulder Road Shiraz is currently selling on the farm for R96

Winnie Bowman CWM

Change for another pack shot

Time for lunch at the Long Table on the terrace, which has marvellous views over the Stellenbosch landscape

Time to discuss the wines while waiting for the food

The menu

The glorious view

A cup of Gazpacho soup. Yes, the mango did work

Lynne’s nightmare, sushi rolls made with cucumber. “Nice and fresh”, said everyone else.

Lentil and Pomegranate salad sprinkled with feta

Very fresh seared beef salad with Thai flavours

Slightly chewy steamed eggplant

An option for the vegetarians

Nicolette Waterford and DJ Guy MacDonald

We had a tasting competition after lunch and this is the line up of wines we tasted blind. Fun, but no one did very well!

Having fun on the phone

The restaurant entrance

The sommelier’s bar

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2015

Cape Point Vineyards cellar at harvest time

We needed to call in at Cape Point Vineyards in Noordhoek to book a tour. Winemaker Duncan Savage VERY kindly took time out of his busy day to show us some of the new tank samples  

New barrels awaiting wine and the press also waiting for grapes

The high view of the cellar

Barrels maturing

And a brand new amphora filed with red wine

Duncan has used concrete eggs for several years. Here he has a new plastic egg

Duncan showing Lynne the amphora. Old techniques can still be used to make very good wine

An old friend and one of our best wine characters:  Give it Horns Cape Wine Master Clive Torr getting involved with grapes this harvest

Duncan giving us tank samples of delicious Cape Point Sauvignon Blanc must.  It was full of peaches and apricots, we can't wait to taste it when it has finished fermenting

Clive working the modern steel grape press

Assistant winemaker Riandri Visser waiting for the grapes to come in to the cellar

Off to Buitenverwachting to take Hermann Kirschbaum a present of some special wine from our cellar for a change.  He is astounded at the variety of things in Lynne’s handbag

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2015

150212 Main Ingredient's MENU - Volare at Peddlars, Franschhoek Summer Wines, Bertus at Spice Route, Jordan chenin, Plum & cinnamon tart

Evening on Milnerton lagoon

In this week’s MENU:

 This week’s products: SE Asian summer ingredients

 Volare, Oh Oh Oh

 Franschhoek Summer Wines

 Bertus Basson at Spice Route

 Black Pearl

 Red Hot Glass, de Villiers Chocolate and Cape Brewing Company on Spice Route

 Jordan Harvest lunch and 2014 Chenin Blanc release

 This week’s recipe: Summer Plum and Cinnamon Tart

 Learn about wine and cooking

We write about our experiences in MENU, not only to entertain you, but to encourage you to visit the places and events that we do. We know you will enjoy them and we try to make each write up as graphic as we can, so you get a good picture of what is on offer at each place, restaurant, wine farm, festival we visit.

To get the whole of our story, please click on “READ ON.....” at the end of each paragraph, which will lead you to the related blog, with pictures and more words. At the end of each blog, click on RETURN TO MENU to come back to the blog version of MENU.

This week’s Product menu      South east Asian recipes are perfect for our summer, light and zingy Some of the ingredients are hot, other quite pungent, like shrimp paste, ketjap manis and fish sauce. Find them here

This week we have had a chance to review two new restaurants, attend a summer wine festival and taste a newly released Chenin Blanc

Volare, Oh Oh Oh      Peddlars on the Bend has been a well visited pub in Constantia for years. It has now been acquired by Chef Brad Ball (who is also the CEO) and partners Steve and Rob Fleck and has been renamed Peddlars & Co. Their new upmarket Italian themed restaurant Volare has recently opened and we were invited to visit and dine last Friday evening. Soon there will be four venues on the property: Volare, The Local - a bar serving craft beers and platters, The Oak Terrace offering Al Fresco dining and Graciales offering small delicious plates for sharing Read on

Franschhoek Summer Wines       This summer festival allows the Franschhoek wine farms to show their best white wines for summer drinking and it is a lovely relaxed event held at Leopards Leap on the lawn. Food is available in the restaurant, there was live music and, on a perfect Saturday, lots of people were having a lot of fun in the sun. Read On

Bertus Basson at Spice Route     The Mining Indaba has been filling Cape Town this last week and it was hard to get a reservation at our favourite restaurants as they were heavily booked, so this gave us a chance to go to this new restaurant, which has only been open for a few days. Bertus Basson is one of our top chefs, a man with a wild child reputation for fun and interesting gourmet food, so we were keen to see what he is doing there. It has a South African traditional food theme running through the menu, but with lots of twists and surprises, as we would expect from Bertus, who deconstructs and enhances and uses the best fresh ingredients. At last there is a place to introduce your guests to traditional South African dishes with good wine. And of course there are a lot of other things to do on Spice Route. Read On

After Lunch we visited Red Hot Glass, de Villiers Chocolate and Cape Brewing Company on Spice Route. See them here

Black Pearl      As we were in the Agter Paarl area for lunch we decided to visit this farm on the A44. We used to sell their wines when we had our wine shop but had never been to the farm to see the Nash family. Read on

Jordan Harvest lunch and the release of their 2014 Chenin Blanc      Phylloxera is a tiny destructive louse, native to America, which preys on and destroys the roots of grape vines. It was accidentally introduced to France in the 1860’s, spread rapidly and devastated the vines there and in the rest of Europe and they all had to be replanted. It also made its way to South Africa on vine root stocks and caused major devastation. It is the reason that all vines in most of the world have to be planted on American root stocks which are immune to it. It was discovered in Mowbray in the Cape in 1886 by a French scientist, Dr Louis Albert Peringuey. He was an Insect taxonomist who became Inspector-general of vineyards in the Cape. Jordan wines have honoured him by naming their newly released 2014 Chenin Blanc after him and we were invited to their Harvest lunch to taste it. Read on.

This week’s recipe is a Summer Plum and Cinnamon Tart. Do not use prune plums, but nice juicy plums which are in season at the moment.

A roll of Flaky pastry – 10 sweet plums – 60 g sugar - ½ t of ground cinnamon - T 2 water – 1 T butter – 2 T corn flour – a pinch of salt – vanilla extract or almond extract - juice of half a lemon

Turn your oven to 190°C. Grease a 22 cm deep pie dish and roll out two circles of pastry. Line the dish with the bottom layer of pastry and put into the fridge to rest, together with the rest of the pastry.

Halve the plums, remove the pips and put the plums into a pan with the cinnamon, sugar, butter and water. Cook until the plums are beginning to soften. Taste and adjust the sweetness or add the lemon juice if the plums are very sweet. Add half a teaspoon of either the vanilla extract or the almond extract according to your taste and the pinch of salt. Remove a couple of tablespoons of the juice and stir in the corn flour then stir it back into the plums. This will prevent the juice from being too liquid when the pie is cooked. You can also use tapioca flour. Set aside to cool.

Fill the pie dish with the plum mixture, cover with the other circle of pastry. Crimp and seal the edges with well beaten egg, decorate the top with pastry trimmings and glaze with the beaten egg and some sugar. Place on a metal tray to avoid spills. Bake for 50 minutes or until the pastry is crisp and golden. Allow to cool for a while before you slice. Serve with whipped cream.

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

The Hurst Campus, an accredited school for people who want to become professional chefs, has a variety of courses. See the details here

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

In addition to the new Sense of Taste Culinary Arts School, Chef Peter Ayub runs a four module course for keen home cooks at his Maitland complex. Details here

Nadège Lepoittevin-Dasse has French cooking classes in Noordhoek 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.

12th February 2015

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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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