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Phones: +27 21 439 3169 / 083 229 1172 / 083 656 4169

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On the MENU this week. Asparagus and Tuna Quiche

Shortcrust pastry 1 cup flour – 1 egg yolk – 2 oz butter – pinch of salt – ice water

Whizz together quickly in your food processor, adding just enough water to bring the pastry together into a soft ball. Cover in cling film and rest in the fridge for ½ an hour, then line a loose bottomed flan tin with baking paper and bake blind with baking beans for 15 minutes at 180ºC

Filling 1 onion – 1 leek - 1 t oil and 1 t butter – 6 or 8 asparagus spears - 1 can of flaked tuna in water - 3 egg yolks and 1 whole egg – 100ml cream – 100g grated pecorino cheese – salt and pepper

Slice the onion and the leek and fry them in the oil and butter with a little salt till soft and beginning to caramelize. Put into the bottom of the pastry case. Blanche the asparagus spears if using fresh, and cut them into 3cm pieces. Add them to the quiche with the drained, flaked tuna. Beat up the eggs with the cream, season and pour over the contents. Sprinkle on the cheese and bake at 180ºC until the custard has just set, about 20 minutes. Serve with a salad and a good crisp Chardonnay like our wine of the week. Delicious warm or cold

All content © John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus

MENU's Wine of the Week. De Wetshof Limestone Hill Chardonnay 2019

The minerality on this new vintage shows first, then the typical slightly bready chardonnay nose of golden citrus. On the palate, fullness with ripe lemon and some apple and peach notes, a little chalkiness, with salty minerality and a hint of tropical fruit on the long finish. Very refreshing, eminently quaffable and great with food. This was confirmed as we drank it throughout our 3 course meal at Sea Breeze restaurant, where it paired well with oysters, prawns, seared tuna and a lemon tart.

As famous wine critic Robert Parker said in the past:"... this wine possesses far better balance and sheer drinkability – not to mention more finesse – than 99% of the world’s Chardonnay I have experienced.” High praise indeed.

R99 on the farm and available with delivery included at R116 from wine.co.za

All content © John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus

Thursday, June 20, 2019

Robertson Wine Valley's Wacky Wine Weekend 12. RiverGold, Le Roux & Fourie

They were not expecting us, but we were given a warm welcome and could taste their wines in the impressive cellar

Owned by the Naidoo family from Durban, we met some of the family members

Mr and Mrs Naidoo on the tasting counter

The wines are made by Lourens van der Westhuizen. The 2015 Sauvignon Blanc is full of green notes, typical of Lourens's style. The 2016 Chenin is bready on the nose, very fruity and sweet with a good acid balance. The Chardonnay has a yeasty nose, and is full of flavour with nice peach with a citrus zing and a bitter grapefruit marmalade finish

The deck outside. The Merlot is green and minty on the nose, and rather agricultural in the old style. The Cabernet Sauvignon has nice cassis on the nose, and good ripe cassis fruit, very juicy. The Shiraz, with we have tasted before at Wine on the River, is perfumed, with plums and very quaffable juicy fruit

A locust in the garden

We went to collect our samoosas and chilli bites from the happy ladies in the kitchen

They have a restaurant and this is the interior

The outside of the restaurant

We sat in the garden and enjoyed the very crisp and flavourful samoosas and chilli bites with a glass of the Chenin blanc

Then it was time for our last call, a new producer for us but, apparently, they have been making wine for several years

It is on the road home to Cape Town and just beyond Rooiberg winery, near the limestone quarry, you will find Le Roux & Fourie

The tasting room is inside

And this very nice young man took us through the wines. He is passionate about wine and we hope he has a long career in it

They seem to hold on to vintages for quite a long time and the wines we tasted were from several vintages back

They also have a café

Which seems to do nice cakes and pies. It was getting late and we finally got home at 6 pm on Sunday. What a full and busy weekend. We used up a lot of petrol getting to all the places in the two valleys and beyond. We had a nice fresh salad for supper and, of course, a bottle of Robertson wine to celebrate being home

Thank you to all of those who welcomed us warmly and gave us such excellent hospitality

The area is well known for it

All content © John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus

Robertson Wine Valley's Wacky Wine Weekend 11. Quando

Our next port of call after Arendsig was just down the road, to visit our friends at Quando

The garden was full of happy people tasting their wines

Friends we made the previous evening at BluVine were enjoying the day

It is a family business. These are the four excellent wines that winemaker Fanus Bruwer makes

Fanus also does the marketing. His brother Martin is the viticulturist

Martin’s wife Estelle keeps them in order!

The 2017 Chenin/Viognier has beautiful peach and lees notes on the nose; Rich old vine Chenin, sophisticated Viognier, with ripe peaches and nectarines, nicely balanced with acidity. The 2019 Mourvedre Rosé always has to be topped up in our cellar, so 6 bottles came home. Red berry fruit on the pretty nose with a little bit of wildness, cassis, rose petals, cranberry and candy floss on the dry palate; a quaffable wine to drink all summer and in the colder months with spicy food. And at R65 a bottle very reasonably priced. The 2016 Pinot Noir is perfumed and has dark berry fruit on the nose and palate; it’s an old style, very satisfying, Pinot Noir. R130

Some free hapjes (snacks) were delivered to every table. Home made (by Fanus) snoek paté and some olive tapenade from their own olives, on seed loaf

We began with the 2019 Sauvignon Blanc. Old School Robertson, crisp and green with a slight tropical note,
very satisfying and so easy to drink with food. R75. A case of that came home too

Fanus came to join us at our table and we had a long chat while tasting the wines

Robertson Wine Valley's Wacky Wine Weekend 8. Silverthorn

Thorns of the Fever Tree (Vachellia xanthophloea) which form the Silverthorn wine logo

John was at Steenberg winery in Constantia for over 15 years as cellarmaster and then General Manager and has produced some of South Africa's finest bubblies. He is a member of the Cape Winemakers Guild and now wanted to concentrate on making more of his own brand, Silverthorn, which he launched in 2004, and which currently which has four MCCs. John qualified at Elsenberg as the Dux student and went on to work first for Môreson in Franschhoek and then back near the family farm for De Wetshof in Robertson. Two years working at Graham Beck's Robertson cellar with Pieter Ferreira followed. In 2001, he was offered the position of Cellar Master at Steenberg. Since then, John has never looked back. He won the prestigious ‘Diners Club Wine Maker of the Year’ in 2003

This is the new Tasting Room, almost completed and it will have one of the best views over the Breede River

of any of the wine farms we have visited. It will also be disabled friendly, with ramps

The family house. They currently have four Cap Classiques, namely The Green Man (Blanc de Blancs), The Genie (Rosé, from Shiraz), Jewel Box (Cuvée of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir) and, for the Cape Winemakers Guild Auction, John has produced Silverthorn Wines Big Dog Méthode Cap Classique (Chardonnay and Pinot Noir)

It is a family business: Karen, John's wife handling the sales, marketing and administration side of the business. Daughter, Faine, handles their social media, while son Tivon helps with wine shows and deliveries

We walk to look at the skeleton of the new cellar

Which now, a week later, already has its roof going on

Note the Green Man hung over the front door, portrayed as a human face surrounded by dense foliage;

he is a symbol of growth and rebirth

He appears in many forms in British, Celtic & Wiccan myth and is known right across Europe. Not unlike depictions of Bacchus

A potent emblem for Silverthorn and the Loubsers

John was busy painting and renovating the windows when we arrived. They are now installed

This is where you will get the marvellous view of the river below

We take a tour of the vineyards and see the limestone in the shale which helps to produce the best wines for bubbly

The sloping vineyards. John has some 75 year old Colombard vines that he intends to use for an MCC in the future,

as well as other vines which are more typically used for MCC

Thena the Rottweiler plays a supporting role. She is the Big Dog on the label

In the 2018 Tim Atkin Report on SA wine, Silverthorn wines scored impressively:

The Genie NV – 92 Points, The Green Man 2015 – 94 Points, Jewel Box 2014 – 95 Points

They treated us to a glass or two of The Jewel Box, named for the 100 vibrant stars called Kappa Crucis near the Southern Cross area of the Milky Way. They were nicknamed Jewel Box by the early 19th Century astronomer Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) who worked in the Cape between 1834 and 1838. It is a blend of 70% Chardonnay and 30% Pinot Noir. And magic does come out of the bottle. Nutty on the nose with hints of strawberry and cherry and some citrus zest. On the palate it is classic with crisp creamy notes of brioche, crispness of citrus & apple with some richness from the reserve portion of Chardonnay which spent 12 months in old French barrels from the partial barrel fermentation on the reserve, exciting bubbles and a nod to good French Champagne in style

And John showed us the enormous bill (in Dollars) from an historic meal he had in the US in 2006

at the famous French Laundry Restaurant in California. He was a guest. Thankfully

The hospitable Loubsers

That view. Thank you both, we cannot wait to see the finished buildings

when you are open and up and running an a few months time