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Wednesday, December 06, 2017

Wine-of-the-Month Club Winemaker Awards 2017

Time for Wine of the Month Club to laud their suppliers. The event was held at Vista Marine restaurant which is behind the Aquarium in the V&A Waterfront. This year's event was a chance to taste some of their most popular wines and meet the winning winemakers

Emil den Dulk of De Toren, Mike Ratcliffe of Warwick and Johan Malan of Simonsig all won awards

The man who started this successful (now on line) wine club in 1986, innovator and owner of Wine-of-the-Month Club Colin Collard

with his sons Clifford and Giscard, directors of the company and daughter Natalie, the wine buyer for the club and the publisher of Good Taste magazine

Clifford Collard began the ceremony. They have 30 000 active members and many more casual buyers. A box of wine is delivered every month. How does the selection of the wines work? They invite a panel of ten independent expert wine judges every week. They ask them to taste 40 wines each week (that is 2000 a year!) and score all the wines blind in a neutral environment at their premises. Blind wine tasting ensures that no judge is influenced by a label, the beauty of a wine farm or warmth of the host. As a member, you can order a selection of wines on line or just let them send you a selected mystery mixed case of the wine styles and varietals you prefer. Check out their website https://www.wineofthemonth.co.za/

Caroline Rillema of Caroline’s Fine Wines won an award for her own Celestina white blend and Jane Ferreira Eedes was there to collect an award for Vondeling

Some hopeful faces. The panel retastes the top 20 of each category every year and finds the champions. They want to award quality

Kathy Leaver Miller, Account and Marketing Manager at Wine-of-the Month Club

Asif Hoosen, Head of Marketing, Product and Public Relations at sponsor Audi South Africa, said that they "are very interested in the top winemakers, they want to know their 'back' stories and to be part of their future"

More intent wine people, with a glass of Johan Malan's winning Simonsig MCC Brut. This has won this category many times

Giscard Collard began the Awards ceremony

One of the slides showing the demographic of their orders nationwide

and another with the top 10 suppliers to the club

Pierre Waal, of Rijks gets his certificate as runner up in the Chenin Blanc category for the Reserve 2011 Chenin. The other runner up was Carl van der Merwe for the De Morgenzon Reserve

Alvi's Drift was awarded the Trophy for the Chenin blanc category with his Albertus Viljoen Chenin blanc 2015 (a Platter 5 star wine), collected here by owner Alvi van der Merwe

The Trophy of Winemaker of the Year went to Gerhard Swart of Flagstone

Some prizes were also awarded, this is some Laborie MCC for winemaker Stephanie Wiid of Fairview

Then it was time for some food to pair with the winning wines

Spicy chicken drumsticks, superb prawns, and fresh oysters,

Those drumsticks

A tray of canapés

Filo pastry quiches

A wicked selection of sweets, chocolates, biscuits and meringues

and a table full of the winning wines to taste

The trophy winners with Colin Collard, only missing Karl Lambour of Tokara who had to leave early

The individual cultivar winners for the Audi South Africa Wine Awards 2017 are:

Chenin Blanc: Alvi’s Drift Wines - Albertus Viljoen Chenin blanc 2015
Dry White Blend: De Morgenzon- Maestro White
Sauvignon Blanc: Brampton Wines
Chardonnay: Pulpit Rock Wines
Bordeaux Blend: Bellevue Wine Estate - Bellevue Tumara 2008
Cabernet Sauvignon: Wellington Wines
Merlot: Bayede Royal Wines
Pinotage: Flagstone Wines - Writer's Block Pinotage
Shiraz: Stony Brook Vineyards - Syrah reserve
MCC: Simonsig - Kaapse Vonkel

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Hillcrest launches new Saartjie wine range

Arno Smith, the winemaker at Hillcrest Wine Estate in Durbanville, invited us and other media to come and taste his newly released wines named after his rather cute Jack Russell terrier, Saartjie. Each of the four wines was paired with some tapas style food and a great evening was enjoyed by all. The wines are now available for tasting and buying at the Hillcrest tasting room.

This is Saartjie, the winemaker’s 2 year old Jack Russell terrier who is his constant companion and his muse and a loved and valued member of the team

Winemaker and viticulturist Arno Smith. He was appointed general winemaking assistant to then winemaker Graeme (Curly) Reed and he made the Sauvignon Blanc and the Rosé, In 2016 he was appointed General Manager and Winemaker. This was his maiden vintage of the red wines

The farm is owned by senior partners in Haw and Ingles, a Cape based construction company specializing in road construction and rehabilitation. Besides wine, they also produce olives, olive oil and now a range of craft beers

Broadcaster Guy MacDonald gets some love

We began the tasting with the Saartjie 2017 Semillon. Made in old white wine barrels, it is in the oxidative style. They allow it to ferment naturally in the barrels and add French oak staves. They made 1 barrel in 2016 which is now sold out, and 1,000 bottles in 2017. Oxidative whiffs, with honeysuckle perfume and 'fine herbes'. Nice limes and cooked apple on the palate, rounded mutton fat texture, as you should find in Semillon, a pinch of Durbanville salt and the wood supports but doesn't show on the palate. A good, enjoyable wine, especially with food

The menu

The Semillon proved itself as a food wine as it went very well with the two dishes served to us: an unusual but good apple and camembert Strudel with figs...

... and cooked pears, gorgonzola and walnuts on a quite tough pastry biscuit.

Then we tasted the 2016 Malbec. Huge notes of expensive French oak on the nose with a little violet. It is a dark, almost black garnet in colour and has intense fruit on both the nose and palate. This is a 10 year wine. Dark berries , cherries, plums and chalky grippy tannins with more violets on the end and some good fruit acidity to help it last the distance. Our favourite wine of the evening and we will try to keep our bottle as long as possible. Lots of quality

This was served with Beetroot and goats cheese

and a rather sweet spicy butternut soup with a parmesan cracker

Then the 2016 Cabernet Franc Still very young this also has lots of incense French oak on the nose with some herbs, with red and black berries. Soft and sweet fruit on the palate with some salty liquorice. It ends with chalky tannins and supporting fruit acid, with a little wildness thrown in

We had this with morsels of good roast pork on top of carrot puree and topped with a very sweet spicy apple chutney ...

... and rather dry chicken koftas on humus, topped with a nice moist smoky paprika tomato relish

Then the 2016 Petit Verdot, which was very popular in the room. It has intense perfume, cassis, coffee mocha on the nose, soft and sweet on the palate with good fruit and a kick of acidity on the end to help it last. This will sell well, it is a good expression of the grape

Accompanied by some rare tuna chunks, seared on the bottom, topped with sesame and rolled cucumber ...

... and awesome rare roast beef slices on crisp rosti with good French mustard, the dish of the evening and so good with the wine

Desserts to tempt were date and coconut balls and extremely moreish dark chocolate Rocky Road chunks which went well with the good coffee -they should sell these in the shop. Lynne bought her annual 3 kilos bucket of black olives from the restaurant shop, a bargain at R220. We thoroughly enjoyed the evening, the wines, food and the company. Thank you Hillcrest

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Monday, December 04, 2017

Mission Britain - Selling wine to the UK plus two Australian views

Last week we were asked to attend a seminar about Exporting Wine to the UK at Joostenberg and to hear from two prominent Australian wine makers who really surprised us as we learnt how difficult winemaking can be in that country. We were so impressed at how open they were with all the facts and figures and a they gave us a warning about water wars

One of the sponsors of the day was the Shippers Hillebrand. The Pebbles Project is another superb charity raising money for education. They " enrich the lives of disadvantaged children and families in the Winelands farming communities in the Western Cape and impact the lives of children and their families by providing support and intervention in five key areas: Education, Health, Nutrition, Community and Protection"

Lynne chatting to Christian Eedes of Winemag.co.za as people take their seats

Lots of young winemakers

Charles Withington of The Darling Wine Shop, who organised this event with Pippa Woods of Seckford Agencies, respected wine importers in the UK

November saw Pippa planning a trip with a difference - bringing world experts in their fields, for their first visit to South Africa to pass on some of their expertise

Judy Kendrick and Ana Sofia de Oliveira from JKMarketing, a leading wine marketing company in the UK

presented a seminar based on their ‘Road Map’ of exporting to the UK

Judy and Ana Sofia gave us information about how costs are distributed in a bottle of wine sold in the UK with the variations across the price range. There is very little profit at the lowest end of the market

and where South Africa stands in relation to other competitors

with a slight improvement in the last quarter

Ana Sofia told the audience how she got into the business, from her origin in Portugal where she worked for ViniPortugal. She set up Wines Unearthed and The Wine Agency in the UK before joining forces with Judy Kendrick at JK Marketing

The audience listening intently

One of the most interesting and concise presentations was Shipping Trends by Marliese Martin, Area Director: Africa, Middle East & India at JF Hillebrand Global Beverage Logistics. She gave important information about shipping costs, pitfalls, insurance and freight. She covered all the necessities in ten minutes. Lynne, who has a diploma in Shipping from her sojourn at Safmarine, does find things like this interesting. She used to ship antiques worldwide when she worked in that trade in London. Not much has changed, just the rates and the jargon. Marliese says that the top three things you need to know about shipping abroad are Incoterms, Risks and the Export process. She warned that you do need to keep up to date with Brexit, things will change. Work with reputable service providers and avoid big fines, don't take shortcuts. The Government needs money and they are looking for it in interesting places

Then it was time to hear from the visiting Australian wine makers and the first presentation was by Anthony Murphy from Trentham Estate in the Murray Darling Region

His family went to Mildura from Ireland in the 1860's. He told us the almost 90% of wine is controlled by the large companies and it did remind us of when KWV and Nederburg held sway before the days of independent wine estates making their own wines rather than selling all their grapes to them. He also told us how they have dealt with years of extreme drought - the 10 year drought began in 2000 and in 2010 they only had 30% of water - sounds familiar. They got through this and now have the best water plan in the world but it took 5 years to operate. 85% of producers are not making money in the drought area. Now water has become an important tradable commodity in Australia. His tanks are outside, barrels inside. They are on the Murray Darling basin, so they have water. The farm was once a sheep station, they have sandy limestone soils. It is run by his brother and one worker, they have cut labour and it is all automated. They farm Chardonnay, Shiraz and Cabernet. They get 130 to 150 mm of rain per annum. To be small is the future as the Corporates control everything - he says with them "It's a race to the bottom. The big firms are putting juice through huge membrane filtration." Australian has gone from 4000 to 2000 growers in 10 years. And he says he avoids Bio label wine, there is no money in it. There is a lot of water trading going on. The farms with are dictating the price and selling to farms without. Table grapes, citrus and almonds are selling better than wine. He says the real cost of producing 12 bottles of wine is A$28.50

Pippa had persuaded her long standing friends, Stephen and Prue Henschke from the Barossa valley in South Australia to join the party. They gave a very interesting presentation. Stephen spoke about the wine making. They trained first in Australia then at Geisenheim in Germany, where many of our top winemakers have also studied. Their Hill of Grace was Australia's wine of the Year in 1987. Henschke is a small farm founded in 1860, making superb top end wines at premium prices from Shiraz vines (on their own roots). The vines originate from pre-phylloxera material which was brought from Europe by the early European settlers. The farm has had 250 years of growing Riesling and Shiraz. There are also small plantings of Riesling, Semillon and Mataro. The oldest vines still producing were planted in the 1860s by Nicolaus Stanitzki. These are called the Grandfathers and are up to and including 100 years old (average age is 80 years) and the cost of production is frightening. As both water and power are limited, they strive to be better rather than bigger

Stephen said they are disappointed with cork; they got the worst quality, screw caps came in and they now use a Vinolok closure and since 1996 the have not used any cork. He says if you are charging $A800 a bottle the wine must not be faulty and must be reliable. They put in a A$1 million bottling line, the first in the southern hemisphere. The average age of their vines is 80 years. Recently they have planted Grüner Veltliner for the future

and Prue talked about the viticulture, which she handles. They try for a sense of place, a flavour of the vineyards. She learnt in Germany how to look after the soil, they have lots of wind and water erosion. She uses pasture grass which is a native wallaby grass, it is hard to grow others. She uses straw coverage under the vines as mulch. They bring in 1000 tons of green waste compost annually and this goes beneath the straw. They also use genetic cuttings from the old vines, layering or replanting

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