A grey heron
contemplates breakfast
In this
week’s MENU:
On
Line Shop
This
week’s Product menu
Our
market activities - Neighbourgoods, Long Beach
Brenaissance
Hartenberg
Riesling Rocks Festival
Wine
Tourism Handbook
Recipe:
Chinese prawn toasts
Tasting
Tokaj at Glen Carlou
Cape
to Canton at The Vineyard
Wine
and Food Events
Wine
courses & cooking classes
Main Ingredient's On Line Shop is performing very well. We
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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 website.
We can send your requirements to you anywhere in South Africa.
Our market activities Come and visit us at the Old
Biscuit Mill’s wonderfully exciting, atmospheric Neighbourgoods
Market, as always, this
Saturday and every Saturday between
09h00 and 14h00. Tip: Some visitors tell us how they struggle to
find parking. It’s quite easy if you know how. Click here for a map which shows
where we park. On Friday, February 23rd, we will be back at the market
in Long Beach Mall, Sun Valley, Fish Hoek.
By the time you read this, Valentine's Day will
be over. We hope that you had a lovely celebration and that our list of
activities was helpful to you
Brenaissance in Devon Valley This farm in the Devon valley, near
Stellenbosch, launched its range of wines to the media last week. We were
seated outside, on a balmy but breezy day, on a deck under high fig trees
between their plum orchards, vines and tasting facility. They also have elegant
bed and breakfast accommodation with a large chapel for weddings on the farm (which
can accommodate 250 people) and they are a Boran
cattle stud. We got to meet a very friendly bull, Brigadier,
and one of the heifers, which the owner Tom Breytenbach had put in a special
pen. They roam the vineyards eating the grass , fertilizing the soil as they
go. And as he pointed out, it is possible to make R1 million on 40 hectares of
grapes but cattle can make you R1 million on one hectare, if you know what you
are doing.
Tom, who is very passionate about his farm, introduced
us to the wines and told us that, while all the grapes are grown on the farm
they do not now, and never will, have a cellar on the farm. They use good local
winemakers from other Stellenbosch farms to make their wine and they use those
farm’s facilities as well.
Lady H 2011, their entry level Sauvignon Blanc, is
made by Bruwer Raats at Longridge. Typical in style of many tropical
Stellenbosch sauvignons, this wine goes well with the pizzas sold in their
fairly new Café Blanc de Noir. (Lady H is Tom’s wife Hayley). Bruwer also makes
the Knights of White 2010 Chardonnay and this full-of-fruit wine is very
similar in style to previous Bruwer Raats wines, deep, complicated and
delicious. Full of salty limes, nectarines and lemons, it has a good sugar acid
balance. Lord T is their non-vintage,
all Stellenbosch grapes red blend and Tom would not tell us what it contained –
we suspect shiraz is involved! And he did confirm that it contains no Pinotage.
Soft sweet fruit with a smoky bacon whiff of wood. Jack of Diamonds is their
2009 Shiraz, full of Cassis, pepper and spice with high toast wood and chalky
tannins. Needs some time. Made by Charles Coetzee on Clos Malverne next door.
Next year, there will be a new winemaker. The 2010 Queen of Hearts Merlot made
by Billy Marklew is their “Mid-vine crisis wine!” according to Tom.
We loved the Full House 2010 Bordeaux Blend, which was
put together by Billy Marklew and Tom but the final blend was done by Nico
Grobler of Eikendal. It has all the Bordeaux varietals and is full of red
berries, soft vanillins and is smooth as silk on the palate. There is a very
good integration of fruit, tannins, acid and wood, which means that it will age
well. Lynne’s notes read: “Made by someone who knows what they are doing”. Only
2600 of the last wine have been made, The King of Clubs 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon.
This wine needs time and is full of intense cassis and soft chalky tannins to
take it forward.
We then went off to try out their restaurant, Café
Blanc de Noir. Set alongside the river with a huge deck it serves good pizzas,
salads and grills. Tom wants to keep it simple so the locals will visit
regularly. Good food, we enjoyed it very much, especially the crisp thin-based
pizzas. See the pictures here.
Hartenberg Riesling Rocks Festival Saturday began wet, very wet indeed for
this time of the year. Cape Town got a good soaking and by the time we got to
Hartenberg after working at the Biscuit Mill it was still dripping down. But then,
suddenly, at 3.30 the sky cleared and we had almost two hours to sample all the
delicious Riesling wines on offer. We hope the rain didn’t deter too many
people from going to this lovely festival.
Lynne so appreciates the style of Riesling now being made,
as there were very few terpenes on show and also mostly only
gentle wooding. The wines were in one marquee, and tables, chairs and lovely
food were in another. Steve Jeffery had his super Black Plate charcuterie
platters and over-filled rolls and Geza & Ghenwe Steingaszner’s Lebanese
stand was full of the delights of that country.
We wanted to start with Howard Booysen’s Riesling but
he had, again, ‘run out’. Obviously an extremely popular wine, this does keep
happening to him. Luckily we get to taste them at trade tastings during the
year. We then moved on to the table with the Thelema and Sutherland Rieslings,
being introduced by Thomas Webb. Each of these is completely different in
character from the other, but both are well worth drinking.
We tasted and chatted to old mates from Nitida, then
Nederburg and Spioenkop, whose wine is very interesting. The Hartenberg
Rieslings are always elegant and sophisticated and have won lots of awards. We
spent a long time catching up with Sally Gower and her son James. Sally has
just become a grandmother for the first time as eldest son Robbie has recently
produced the first of the next generation of Gowers.
Styles at the show varied from crisp and taut wines to
full blown and honeyed fruit with nice acid structure. Some had lovely full
weight on the mouth and others lovely floral rose petal and honeysuckle on the
nose and palate. We particularly liked and therefore had to buy, some of the honeysuckle
and peach Groote Post and the marmaladey Parker Family Reserve Riesling from Altydgedacht
which is classified as off dry, but seems dry because of the good sugar acid
balance. We spent a while talking to both Nick Pentz of Groote Post and
Altydegedacht winemaker Etienne Louw about their wines and this year's harvest.
These will be drunk this year with spicy food, probably Thai or Szechuan.
We also would have liked to have bought some of the De
Wetshof, which was very fresh, lively and young but, by the time we got to the
wine purchasing table, run by Lodine Maske of Fromage de France in Franschhoek,
they had departed with all their wine. Next year perhaps? We have some pictures of the event here
Now we wait with anticipation for Hartenberg’s very
popular Shiraz festival which will be held later in the year.
Wine Tourism
Handbook 2013: Sip, stay and play in South Africa’s Winelands
Monika Elias has just published this year’s edition,
so do go and get your copy now, so that you can plan where to visit. As she
points out: “Wine tourism is a global phenomenon and it is a growing market,
but we are fast getting the impression that here in South Africa, we do it
rather well, perhaps better than most. Our handbook is a reflection of this
burgeoning market”.
As wine tourism is about the entire experience – wine,
food, people, activity and place – detailed listings are offered for the best
places to eat, stay and play – whether that is casual cafés or fine dining, rustic
cottages or five star hotels, a wine picnic on the river or helicopter flip
over the vineyards. The Handbook is an indispensible companion to anyone
looking to have a fun, meaningful and in-depth experience when visiting the
country’s wine regions. If you are one of the readers in another country and
are planning a visit, it might be a huge help. In addition, you can also look at our
website to see what we
can do for you.
Today’s recipe is very simple but has, in
the past, been one of our favourite canapés, which we have neglected for a few
years. Thanks to Glen Carlou for reminding us of it.
Chinese Prawn Toasts
6 slices white bread - 500 g
raw shelled shrimps or prawns – 2 t finely grated fresh ginger – 2 spring onions,
finely chopped – 1 egg white, beaten - 1 T cornflour – 1 t light soy sauce – 1
t dark soy sauce – 1 t toasted sesame oil – ½ t ground white pepper - ½ t salt
75g white sesame seeds – oil
for frying, peanut or canola
Cut off the crusts from the bread. Put all the other
ingredients in the first group into a food processer and grind to a medium
paste. Spread the paste onto the bread, sprinkle over the sesame seeds, then
cut each slice into four triangles. Heat the oil in a wok and fry the toasts
prawn side down for 1 minute until crisp and golden. Then turn and fry the
other side for 15 to 30 seconds, remove and drain on kitchen paper briefly,
keep warm in the oven while you fry the rest and then serve. You can make the
paste earlier in the day and keep in the fridge, covered with cling film until
you need it. You can serve with a chilli and garlic dipping sauce.
Tokaj tasting Some wine tastings are so rare and special
that we will remember them for the rest of our lives. We have been fortunate
over the many years we have been studying, selling and writing about wine to
have tasted Tokay wines from Hungary only once or twice, so, when Elsie Pels
CWM invited us to a tasting of five of them, we did not hesitate in accepting.
This was held at Glen Carlou last week.
Tokay
wines are legendary, with a history going back to 1650 – just a little older
than wines from Constantia. Made from Furmint and Harslevelu grapes (and
sometimes a little yellow Muscat added), they are intensely sweet botrytis
wines, similar to Sauternes and Constantia, and were drunk in the courts of
Peter the Great and his daughter Catherine, as well as in other courts in
Europe. The bunches of grapes are left to rot and desiccate on the vine late into
the year. Each grape has to be picked individually and the wines go through an
extremely complicated and long fermentation process to extract the high levels
of sugar and the right balance of acidity. Fermentation on the sweetest and
most concentrated wines can take up to 30 years and then only achieve an
alcohol of 7% or less. In the very best years, the top wines can reach an
astounding 920 gsl (grams of sugar per litre), but will have a good acidity to
balance the sugar. More details of the tasting, with pictures, are here
We have been very lucky this year. On top of these and
other great wines at various tastings, we have had some very special wines at
home. You can see some of them here
Celebrating the Year of the Snake If all this were not enough, Sunday was
Chinese New Year and the Vineyard hotel, in conjunction with Neil Pendock, put on
an innovative celebration called Cape to Canton. Tables were scattered
throughout their marvellous gardens and on each was a chef preparing a
different Chinese delicacy. Each table had at least two wine farms serving
tastings of a small selection of their wines which went with the food. It was a
hot day, but there were lots of umbrellas and many people to laze on cushions
on the grass. We had traditional drumming and a dragon dance and the hotel’s huge
tortoises put on a show of their own. You checked in, got your glass and a map
and went from one table to another sampling everything. If you paid a premium,
you also gained entry to the Bisquit Brandy area, where there was an
opportunity to taste different brandies and special wines and even try a Cohiba
cigar. Click here to see the photographs.
We do hope they repeat this again next year, it was a very good way to celebrate.
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.
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.
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 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! ®
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George Petousis brings in a load
