Sunday, October 07, 2012

27 September 2012 Main Ingredient's MENU - Chenin Blanc conference, Gold Restaurant, Cape Wine exposition, Conference Centre food, Saltimbocca, Anchovy & lemon butter for asparagus, Etc.


MENU
Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal
Gourmet Foods, Ingredients & Fine Wines
Eat In Guide’s Outstanding Outlet Award Winner from 2006 to 2010
+27 21 439 3169 / +27 83 656 4169
Three seagulls playing in stormy waves off Sea Point

In this week’s MENU:

*     Products
*     Our market activities
*     Chenin Blanc conference
*     Gold Restaurant
*     Cape Wine exposition
*     Conference Centre food
*     Saltimbocca
*     Anchovy & lemon butter for asparagus
*     Events and Restaurant specials
*     Wine courses & cooking classes
To take a look at our Main Ingredient blog, follow the link: http://adamastorbacchus.blogspot.com/
because to tell the whole story here would take too much space. You can also click on underlined and Bold words in the text to open links to pictures, blogs, pertinent websites or more information
This week’s Product menu   Exciting news! We have obtained a small supply of the wonderful, complex West African spice Grains of Paradise – just the thing for lovers of pepper and chilli. It hits you with really pungent heat and then runs through layers of flavour, almost like allspice with serious attitude. If you like chilli and pepper, you’ll love this! To see what else we have available for you, you can access our product list and see pictures in our website. If you can’t find what you need, let us know and we will try to find it for you. Until our online shop is ready, drop us an email and we will help you. We are very happy to see that traffic on our website is increasing and more orders are coming from it.
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.
We will be back at Long Beach Mall tomorrow, Friday 14th September from 09h00 to 16h00. We look forward to seeing you there.
Chenin Blanc Association Conference     This country produces the most wonderful range of Chenin Blanc wines. It is our most widely planted cultivar, being about 20% of the wines grown in South Africa (this percentage has dropped from 30% in 1997) . It is a wine that can be drunk young when its style is fresh and fruity and vibrant, it can be drunk after several years where it can show wonderful rich ripe and generous mouthfeel characteristics. If some gentle wood is added, it shows much aging potential and maturity and even more richness. And it can make some of the best Noble Late harvest dessert wines. All of these styles go very, very well with food.
South African Chenin gets good attention overseas, but our local industry seems to be a little confused as to the direction to take in marketing it. This was our impression at the Chenin Conference on Monday at the One&Only Hotel. Just market it as “Glorious Chenin, the versatile grape” is our opinion. And stop selling it in bulk overseas to people who have no respect for it, who have no idea how to make it and who are ruining our reputation by marketing it as “South African wine”.
The first session : Do wines from Chenin Blanc in the various growing regions, express their unique regionality covered terroir, soil and climate and the speakers compared our very varied conditions and soils with other places where Chenin is grown, like the Loire, where the growing conditions and soils do not vary much. We think the differences are a positive not a negative and we love the way one region or ward can produce something so different and interesting from another. While Sauvignon blanc can show badly in hot areas, Chenin does not have this problem, it just uses what it is given to produce something drinkable - if the winemaker has the skill to turn it into a good wine. Some of the rules do need to be changed to aid farmers in producing better Chenin.
Chenin is also used in outstanding award winning blends. We have to protect our old vines before they are pulled up as they can produce some of the very best wines. Different clones also need to be brought in to improve our wines.
But the most important thing to emerge was research to find how to change the Public’s perception of Chenin, from a cheap, easy drinking wine to a classic varietal capable of producing superb quality. This was highlighted in the second session: Feedback from the 3 year research project on Chenin by Dr Hélène Nieuwoudt of Stellenbosch University. This was interesting but incomplete because the research had just received more funds, so the investigation into the chemistry, taste profiles, consumer perceptions and choices, associations and psychology of this interesting wine continues.
Jeff Grier CWM, of Villiera, led us through an interesting and quite varied tasting of 12 superior Chenins of different styles and regions. Flight 1, classified as Fresh and Fruity: Perdeberg 2012; Slanghoek 2012; Simonsig 2012; Lutzville Diamond Collection 2011; Radford Dale Renaissance 2010; Mulderbosch Small Change 2009.
Flight 2 classified as Rich and Ripe: Spier 21 Gables 2010; Rudera Robusto 2009; Rijks Reserve 2009; Remhoogte Honeybunch 2011; Graham Beck Bowed Head 2010; Ken Forrester FMC
Some of these wines were then served with lunch at Nobu and showed beautifully with the different courses. It is apparent that not all Chenins show well when tasting, but they come alive when put together with food. Click here to see the people, the wines and some of what we ate ... it was memorable.
Gold in Africa     Gold restaurant is no longer in the Martin Melck house in Strand Street. It has moved to 15 Bennett Street in Green Point, just off Prestwich Street. This restaurant highlights food from the whole African continent and the experience also includes drumming sessions and traditional African entertainment by its staff and Mali puppeteers.
We were invited to see the new restaurant on Tuesday night and were very impressed. It is now on four floors and has access to a huge entertainment and function venue in the next building. And there is a stunning roof terrace. The decor is so impressive because it is filled with beautiful arts and crafts, traditional masks and other artefacts from the African continent. While you eat the R250 set menu of at least 9 courses, you are entertained by music, dancing, drumming and puppets and there is huge energy and life in the spaces. Definitely a place to take all your visitors to, but do book as they are one of the busiest places in Cape Town, with lots of tours enjoying the drumming and the dinner. See the photos by clicking here
Cape Wine     This very large, normally biennial, trade exhibition is South Africa’s most important wine export showcase, organised by Wines of South Africa. It started on Tuesday morning and ran through to this afternoon. Because of all the activity surrounding the 2010 football World Cup, it was not held that year, so it had not been held for four years.  It was extremely well organised and, it seems, was visited by many overseas buyers and media, which is just what our wine industry needs. Our first day’s visit started with a seminar on Pinots Noir from the Hemel and Aarde Valley, presented by Peter Finlayson of Bouchard Finlayson. Click here to see pictures from our visits over the three days. We visited many stands and tasted new and older wines on offer. On Wednesday, we rushed to join the Pinotage Seminar. The 1964 Lanzerac had not lasted as well as the 1959 we tasted 4 years ago, but from the 1974 Zonnebloem, they showed great maturity and elegance and the newer vintages show lots of promise. This afternoon, John rushed in to collect a newly released wine he needed to photograph for a client, but was lucky enough to have the time to visit a few more stands and to enjoy a half hour presentation of Robertson chardonnays by Graham Beck cellarmaster Pieter “Bubbles” Ferreira.
The food at CTICC     The catering offered to exhibitors and their guests in the conference centre is absolutely abysmal – a disgrace. And, because of this, the restaurant seemed to be constantly empty, while the small coffee bar near the entrance could not cope with the queues of hungry people, including exhibitors trying to do business, who wanted to grab a bite and get back to the show. All through Cape Wine we heard complaints about the quality of the food and the staff. The food on offer was not inexpensive, but most people would have been prepared to pay a bit more for something palatable.
How can we showcase our best wines and produce our worst food? Cape Town has a reputation for the best food in the country and we offer our visitors this tasteless, soggy rubbish at one of our most important exhibition centres. Plastic, blotting paper sandwiches, cold and clammy wraps with minimal filling and long queues. Inarticulate staff who cannot tell you what is inside the food. And there is not much content for the money. No wonder the restaurant is empty. People are walking up to Woolworths to get salads. And there is not much else in the area. It is embarrassing. What must the foreign trade and media think? Lynne posted a comment on her Facebook page and has received many negative comments from people who have had the same experience at this and other conferences. Why can’t we have a Taste of Cape Town tasting with our top chefs alongside the next Cape Wine?
Classic Saltimbocca      On Saturday nights, we are usually tired after working at the Biscuit Mill, so Lynne cooks something quite simple for supper. This week she was still Italian inspired, so she decided to treat John to Saltimbocca (“jumps in the mouth” is the translation). It is not at all difficult to make and we happened to have all the right ingredients. You are meant to use (please, ethically raised) veal or baby beef, but it is quite acceptable to use pork fillet. You need about two pieces for each person.
8 Veal escalopes or Pork fillet slices – 8 slices of prosciutto ham – 8 sage leaves – seasoned flour – 1T butter – 250ml white wine or Marsala – juice of ½ a lemon
You need small slices about 3 cm thick, which you cover in cling film and then bash the living daylights out of till they are tender and no more than 1 cm thick. Think of your worst enemy and get rid of some frustration. Place one fresh sage leaf on each escalope, then wrap with the ham. Secure with a toothpick if the ham does not fully wrap the meat.  Dip the meat on both sides into the seasoned flour and fry each side gently for a minute or two, until the ham is crisp and golden. Remove from the pan and keep warm. Deglaze the pan with the wine and a squeeze of lemon juice, pour over the Saltimbocca and serve. Wonderful with thin steamed green beans that are sautéed briefly in butter and garlic slices. The traditional starch would be a pasta like linguine or creamy polenta to soak up the juices.
On Sunday we had another dinner party and this recipe was what we served with our amazing fresh asparagus:
Anchovy and lemon butter for Asparagus
40g of soft butter – 6 anchovies – juice of half a lemon.
Mash the anchovies with the lemon juice, then add to the butter. Melt and pour over cold or warm asparagus.
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 help you choose an event to visit, click on 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. Click here to access the Calendar. You will need to be connected to the internet.
Learn about wine and cooking We have had 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 here.
Chez Gourmet in Claremont has a programme of cooking classes. A calendar of their classes can be seen here. Pete Ayub, who makes our very popular Prego sauce, runs evening cooking classes at Sense of Taste, his catering company in Maitland. We can recommend them very highly, having enjoyed his seafood course. Check his programme here.
Restaurant Special offers. Some more restaurants have responded to our request for an update of their special offers and we have, therefore, updated our list of restaurant special offers. Click here to access it. These Specials have been sent to us by the restaurants or their PR agencies. We have not personally tried all of them and their listing here should not always be taken as a recommendation from ourselves. If they don’t update us, we can’t be responsible for any inaccuracies in the list. When we have tried it, we’ve put in our observations. We have cut out the flowery adjectives etc. that so many have sent, to give you the essentials. Click on the name to access the relevant website. All communication should be with the individual restaurants.
 
20th August 2012

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 product list 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 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 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.
This electronic journal has been sent to you because you have personally subscribed to it or because someone you know has asked us to send it to you or forwarded it to you themselves. Addresses given to us will not be divulged to any person or organisation. We collect them only for our own promotional purposes and keep our mailing list strictly confidential. If you wish to be added to our mailing list, please click here to send us a message and if you wish to be removed from our mailing list, please click here to send us a message.

20 Sept 2012 Main Ingredient's MENU - Dinner party, Ma Mere Maison, John Collins wine, tasting, Jewish Holidays, Bruce Robertson, Photography, Events and Restaurant specials, etc.


MENU
Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal
Gourmet Foods, Ingredients & Fine Wines
Eat In Guide’s Outstanding Outlet Award Winner from 2006 to 2010
+27 21 439 3169 / +27 83 656 4169
Click here to Subscribe to MENU or to contact us
Fishermen on the rocks at Bantry Bay, near Sea Point



In this week’s MENU:
*     Products
*     Our market activities
*     Dinner party
*     Ma Mere Maison
*     John Collins wine tasting
*     Jewish Holidays
*     Bruce Robertson
*     Photography
*     Events and Restaurant specials
*     Wine courses & cooking classes
To tell every story here would take too much space, so click on underlined and Bold words in the text to open links to pictures, blogs, websites or more information
This week’s Product menu   The brilliant French Edmond Fallot mustards from Burgundy continue to sell very well – so well, in fact, that some of our fellow marketers are now buying them from us in 5Kg catering packs. So, when you come and enjoy some of the great delicacies at the Biscuit Mill and taste and love the mustard, you know you can get some yourself, but in a more convenient pack. To see what else we have available for you, you can access our product list and see pictures in our website. If you can’t find what you need, let us know and we will try to find it for you. Until our online shop is ready, drop us an email and we will help you. We are very happy to see that traffic on our website is increasing and more orders are coming from it.
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.
Because of corporate marketing activities which exclude us, we will not be back at Long Beach Mall until Friday 5th October from 09h00 to 16h00We look forward to seeing you there. In the interim, please contact us at home or come and see us at the Neighbourgoods Market every Saturday.
Dinner Party      For a change, we've had a reasonably manageable week, so we have started inviting our friends to supper again. It is about time, we have been so busy this cold, cold winter that we have done very little entertaining and we suspect that many of you have too.
Lynne took advantage of the meat price war that is raging at Long Beach Mall. Fruit and Veg City is slashing its prices to compete with both Pick 'n Pay and Woolworths. Example: Superb lamb loin chops were R59.95 a kilo there, R99 at Pick n Pay and R129 at Woolworths. She also bought an entire shin of beef, ready sliced, for R99. That started the idea of making an Osso Bucco. And the Italian theme started to mushroom. Well no, not quite, absolutely no mushrooms for John.
We found very thin spaghettini at one  of our Italian suppliers, a No.17, and we were lucky enough to have had a sample of very special and expensive Trikalinos Avgotaraho bottarga which was sent to us by a Greek exporter, so that was our first course. They say on their label that this product is rated as one of the 30 top Products of the World by Ferran Adria, so we were even more keen to try it. It is sun dried grey mullet roe, sealed in beeswax. We have eaten Sicilian bottarga once before and Lynne googled suitable recipes. The one we like the best was with olive oil, garlic and lemon zest, with the bottarga crumbled in as we served it. Lynne’s instinct said to add a whole lot of lemon juice and it worked very well. We do find bottarga just a little bitter, but it is an interesting starter, served on rocket leaves. All our friends enjoyed it. We served Cape Point 2009 Sauvignon blanc (Woolworths Platter 5 star version) with it and they made an excellent partnership
The recipe we used for the Osso Bucco is one by Iron Chef Mario Batali from his book Simple Italian Food and it was really good. He also recommends that you use a gremolata made with parsley, toasted pine nuts and lemon zest. You will find the recipe on www.mariobatali.com/recipes_ossobuco.cfm or on the Food Network pages. We served two wines with this dish. We had been wanting to try Christopher Keet’s 2009 First Verse blend of the five Bordeaux varieties and decided to compare it with the last vintage (2005) of his wonderful Crescendo Cabernet franc based blend, made while he was at Cordoba. Chris’ wines usually age very well and they benefit from being decanted, so we decanted the First Verse 48 hours before serving and the Crescendo 24 hours before. We were all amazed at the similarity in style between the two wines, despite the difference in their blends, but, perhaps, we should not have been, the winemaker’s style is boss in this instance. The match with the dish, again, was excellent - spicy blackcurrant fruit working really well with the meaty tomato flavour of the dish.
With this, Lynne made a classic saffron risotto Milanese using our Carnaroli rice and accompanied it with simply steamed and al dente thin green beans.
For dessert, we had a simple vanilla pannacotta flavoured with Frangelico liqueur, surrounded by red berries from the Rumtopf we made at Christmas. Two recommendations: don’t ever use blueberries in a Rumtopf. They come out like hard bullets of cardboard with no flavour. And we have finally found a use for those decorative silicone cake/cupcake moulds, from which you can never remove the cakes without shattering them into shapeless messes. They work perfectly for panacottas, which turn out very easily if you run a sharp knife around the edges and then ease them out. Do this ahead of time so that you won’t get into a fluster during dinner. Lynne used ours, which are shaped like small sunflowers, and they looked very pretty indeed on the plates. Now to try the large one for an orange coloured jelly in the summer...  With this, we served a 2005 Nuy White muscadel. Some people still think it is “the right thing to do” to proclaim a dislike for sweet wine. Try something like this – the bottle won’t last long!
Another time-saving tip for risotto: Lynne gently fried the shallots and the rice in the butter before dinner and then just had to add the wine and hot stock to make the risotto, while the guests talked after the starter. It did not affect the result at all.
We have another supper planned for this Sunday and we are busy planning our menu from ingredients in season. Many of you tell us that you get inspiration from what we cook and the wine with which we pair the food. There was some beautiful fresh asparagus – white and green – at the Biscuit Mill on Saturday. Price was a little hairy at R120 a kilo but it will start to come down as the season progresses. We had artichokes as a starter tonight and they were about the best we have ever had. Lovely thick, fleshy leaves with a delicious flavour.
Another recommendation. There is a wonderful stall at the Neighbourgoods Market called Ma Mere Maison and we have discovered that Lexi Bechet really, really knows how to make superb confectionery: superb, salty, nut brittle (not peanut), melting rose flavoured marshmallow, soft and squidgy toasted coconut marshmallow, great mini macaroons, the best nougat, and cake pops amongst others. All real flavours and quality nuts at good prices. Come and sample some on Saturday. She also has a shop at unit G3 Salt Circle, 19 Kent Road, Salt River (over the road from The Biscuit Mill), if you can’t get to the Neighbourgoods market on Saturdays. Lynne does not have a sweet tooth, but she cannot resist these treats.
John Collins’ trade wine tasting at Den Anker yesterday was another huge success. We visited Den Anker during the Master of the Trade Routes promotion in July (see our blog) and were very happy to return. John Collins moved to this venue for his tasting last year and it is a huge improvement over the previous venue. Den Anker produced excellent canapés to match the wines (see pics here), well-balanced flavours and no chilli or heavily spiced foods to kill the flavours of the wines. John has an excellent list: Diemersfontein, Jordan, Kleinood, Newton Johnson, Peter Bayly, Springfield and Thelema Sutherland, with a new addition: Cartology from the Hemel en Aarde Valley. With so many wines to taste, one can only mention a few highlights. Chris Alheit of Cartology wants to concentrate on the grapes that most illustrate this country, so his first wine is a Chenin blanc/Semillon blend from old vinesWe loved it, rich and rounded, and it impressed most who tasted it. Springfield is always a treat and we re-tasted the two lovely Sauvignons, Special Cuvée and Life from Stone and also loved the Wild Yeast and Methode Ancienne Chardonnays (Lynne was heard to mention the dreaded words “Birthday Wine” on tasting the Method Ancienne Chardonnay - thank goodness her birthday was last month!) and the Methode Ancienne red blend. Jordan has a huge range, so we’ll mention the best of a good lot: Outlier Sauvignon blanc, the “ordinary” Chardonnay, the wonderful Nine Yards Chardonnay, the Prospector Shiraz and the flagship Cobbler’s Hill red blend. Wine cellar architect Gerhard de Villiers of Kleinood had his Tamboerskloof wines: a fresh new Rosé, newly released Viognier, thankfully unwooded, and their always excellent Shiraz. Winemaker Rudi Schulz showed us his Sutherland wines from Thelema’s Elgin property. Our favourites were the Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon and Shiraz. Diemersfontein had their very popular “coffee” Pinotage, with chocolate coated coffee beans as an accompaniment and we loved the Carpe Diem Chenin blanc and Pinotage. They have launched a new unwooded Chenin, very reasonably priced and delicious. Bevan Newton Johnson showed his Felicité and Family Reserve ranges. The Full Stop Rock Rhône-style blend impressed us enough when we tasted the last vintage for us to buy a case and the 2010 is also excellent. Their Chardonnays and Pinots are always excellent and the Family Pinot Noir was one of the best wines of the evening. The Felicité Rosé will be a delicious light summer lunch time wine. Peter Bayly’s wines are well-known to us because he has the table next to ours at the Neighbourgoods Market. His III Red blend, made from Touriga Nacional with splashes of Tinta Barocca and Souzao is a delicious big wine in the style of the Portuguese Dao wines, but it does benefit from keeping or decanting. His Ports, White and Cape Vintage, are delicious after dinner treats. All in all, a wonderful show.
One strange note was observed as we left the tasting (actually too many notes): the curio shop next to Hildebrand restaurant was playing Jingle Bells. It is a shop with a very African theme, so playing a song about dashing through the snow would be strange in Cape Town at Christmas time - even stranger in September.
Jewish holidays      We should have done this last week and apologise for the delay, but we send all our Jewish readers our best wishes in this Rosh Hashana week and we also wish you well over the Fast.
Bruce Robertson     Many of you will remember Bruce from the Cape Grace and from his own restaurant, The Showroom. After a stint in the bush, Bruce is now cooking at home in his Boathouse on Beach Road in Scarborough on the Peninsula’s south coast. You can find him at http://www.chefbrucerobertson.com/p/boathouse.htmlWe’ve always enjoyed his food and anticipate a successful venture.
Photography     John has had enough interest in his photographs from potential customers recently to persuade him to revive his dormant career as a photographer. If you are interested, you can see some of his photographs and his rate card at www.adamastorbacchus.com
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 help you choose an event to visit, click on 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. Click here to access the CalendarYou will need to be connected to the internet.
Learn about wine and cooking We have had a lot of enquiries from people who want to learn more about wineCathy Marston and The Cape Wine Academy both run wine education courses, some very serious and others more geared to fun. You can see details here.
Chez Gourmet in Claremont has a programme of cooking classes. A calendar of their classes can be seen here. Pete Ayub, who makes our very popular Prego sauce, runs evening cooking classes at Sense of Taste, his catering company in Maitland. We can recommend them very highly, having enjoyed his seafood course. Check his programme here.
Restaurant Special offers. Some more restaurants have responded to our request for an update of their special offers and we have, therefore, updated our list of restaurant special offersClick here to access it. These Specials have been sent to us by the restaurants or their PR agencies. We have not personally tried all of them and their listing here should not always be taken as a recommendation from ourselves. If they don’t update us, we can’t be responsible for any inaccuracies in the list. When we have tried it, we’ve put in our observations. We have cut out the flowery adjectives etc. that so many have sent, to give you the essentials. Click on the name to access the relevant website. All communication should be with the individual restaurants.








20th September 2012

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 product list 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 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 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.
This electronic journal has been sent to you because you have personally subscribed to it or because someone you know has asked us to send it to you or forwarded it to you themselves. Addresses given to us will not be divulged to any person or organisation. We collect them only for our own promotional purposes and keep our mailing list strictly confidential. If you wish to be added to our mailing list, please click here to send us a message and if you wish to be removed from our mailing list, please click here to send us a message.

Friday, October 05, 2012

South Africa’s leading Chardonnays for 2012 revealed


Cape Town, 03 October 2012: The results of the 2012 Christian Eedes Chardonnay Report were revealed today at an intimate gathering in Cape Town. The report, produced by emerging wine commentator Christian Eedes in partnership with Sanlam Private Investments (SPI),  aims to celebrate South African wines from this much loved varietal which Eedes describes as ‘the grape responsible for the greatest dry white wine in the world, despite what Riesling lovers might like to think!’.
A panel of judges, led by Eedes, scrutinised 60 carefully chosen Chardonnays in order to identify their top ten and compile the in-depth report which is available online as a reference for all wine lovers.
Eedes says the top ten Chardonnays for 2012 were nothing short of world-class, and he is delighted with the broad range of styles coming through in this year’s selection. "There were two 5-Star wines in this year's report, each in a very distinct style. The Jordan Barrel Fermented 2011 is for me archetypical Chardonnay - intense citrus, creamy texture, bright acidity. Technically correct but not at all boring. The Uva Mira Single Vineyard on the other hand is a bit more quirky with some more hard-to-describe savoury flavours."  
Alwyn van der Merwe, director of investments at SPI, said that SPI’s involvement in the report has been a happy and fruitful journey so far. “It is wonderful to see Christian’s Chardonnay report gathering momentum year-on-year and we believe it is carving a strong and important niche for itself on the annual wine calendar.”
He said that as an investment house SPI always keeps a close eye on ‘passion investments’ - of which wine is an important example – as an alternative investment option for high net worth clients. “From an investors’ perspective, wine has a long legacy of value and continues to be a passion investment option with strong appeal globally. Although this upward trend is set to continue, I do offer a word of caution. The wine market is still mostly unregulated and fraudsters have preyed on eager wine investors in the past. I strongly advise potential investors to speak to the experts, and consult references like the Christian Eedes Chardonnay Report to help identify top quality South African wines.”
The Christian Eedes Top Ten Chardonnay wines for 2012 are:
Five stars
1.    Jordan Barrel Fermented 2011
2.    Uva Mira Single Vineyard 2011
Four and a half stars
3.    Almenkerk 2011
4.    Hamilton Russell Vineyards 2011
5.    Hartenberg 2010
6.    KWV The Mentors 2011
7.    Radford Dale 2011
8.    Sterhuis Barrel Selection 2010
9.    Sumaridge 2010
10. Tokara Reserve Collection Walker Bay 2011

For further information, or to download the full report visit
www.sanlamprivateinvestments.co.za or www.whatidranklastnight.co.za.

Ends


For further information contact Elysa Miller on 021 469 1572/ 072 142 5159 or Elysa@atmosphere.co.za

About Christian Eedes
Long-serving team member and previous editor of Wine magazine, Christian Eedes is an acknowledged wine expert and has extensive experience judging a number of high-profile wine competitions - including the Veritas Awards, Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show, Platter’s Wine Guide, and was chairman of the panel for the 2011 FNB Sauvignon Blanc Top 10. 
For more information visit http://www.whatidranklastnight.co.za/about/ or @ChristianEedes.
About Sanlam Private Investments
Part of the Sanlam Group, Sanlam Private Investments (SPI) is an international, holistic, integrated wealth management business that provides advice and manages assets for high net worth private individuals and their families in South Africa, the UK, Western Europe and Australia. 400 people across 23 international offices oversee and administrate R120bn in assets under management for 30,000 clients. SPI has offices in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, Claremont, Tygervalley, Stellenbosch, George, Knysna and the UK.

For more information visit www.sanlamprivateinvestments.co.za or @SPIMasterMind

Jean Daneel's Le Grand Jardin launch at La Mouette

The Le Grand Jardin Chenin Blanc, the White Sauvignon Chenin blend and the Red Shiraz Merlot blend
Jean Daneel discussing winemaking
His wife Renée in the background
Cathy Marston, Corlien Morris of Wine Concepts and Hennie Coetzee of Batonage taking notes
Angela Lloyd takes a photo
Jean is passionate about his wines
Renée telling us about Reneesance, her restaurant in Napier
Portrait of the winemaker
Tiny chicken kebabs with a peanut saté sauce
Shot glasses of pea soup
Crisp prawns on a fresh corn salsa
Henry Vigar’s famous cheese croquettes and suppli balls of rice, deep fried in batter
Mini hamburgers and a rich duck liver mousse on toast
Higgo Jacobs, Sommelier at Catharina’s, Roy Davies of The Vineyard Hotel and Norman McFarlane, listening intently to the Daneels talk about wine growing and running a restaurant in Napier
Tiny spring rolls with a chilli dip
Photographs © John Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2012