Creation Pinot vertical tasting at the second annual Hemel-en-Aarde Pinot Noir Celebration

The entire Hemel & Aarde valley celebrates Pinot Noir each year for three days in February. You really have to be in the know however, as they only sell 150 tickets but for the princely sum of R1800 you can spend Friday evening and all day Saturday and Sunday at farms tasting Pinot Noir, attending comparative, vertical, horizontal and foreign tastings and eating superb food. We did hear it said that they would like to widen the audience in the future and we hope they do. We certainly would like to experience more Pinot Noir, but were delighted to be invited to Creation’s event on Saturday evening where we tasted four vintages of their four different Pinot Noirs and had an excellent dinner.

A lovely welcome with inventive canapés and glasses of either the Creation white blend of Sauvignon & Semillon 2014, served with a mini clam and asparagus tart and tomato, basil and pepper on a parmesan shortbread or their excellent 2014 Chardonnay, which is soft and buttery and full of citrus. It went very well with the smoke butternut soup and the smidgen of crayfish with avo and aioli on a tiny toast round – messy but divine

Time to take our seats inside for the tasting at this very well attended function

Waiting for proceedings to begin

Carolyn Martin opened the evening and gave us background on their pinot noirs

A view of the vineyards and a cottage that overlooks Creation

Harvest has just begun and the vines are heavy with grapes

The Creation Pinot Noirs for tasting and the menu

We started with the 2013, the Reserve 2013, the Creation Art of Pinot Noir 2013, Emma’s Pinot Noir 2012 and the Reserve Pinot 2011. The 2013 has gentle fruit whiffs of brandy and smoke and concentrated sharp red cherries with long flavours. Needs time and will mature beautifully. The 2013 Reserve has incense wood and vanilla ice on top of cherries jubilee. Smooth as silk with red and black cherries long warm flavours. Drinking well now.

The Art of Pinot Noir 2013 is their best wine, full of perfume, violets and wood on the nose. Its made to last and has forest floor notes, chalky tannins, and darker fruit than the others more rhubarb with the cherries. Its the most elegant wine too and will age superbly.

Emma the Martin’s daughter made this wine when she was 10 in 2012 and it is full of soft brûléed fruit, lots of cherries, very approachable and enjoyable.

The Reserve 2011 shows what the 2013 will become. Cherries and vanilla, rich and similar to the 2013 just smoother with nice wood support. Still toasty with a little liquorice on the end.

Winemaker/owner Jan Claude Martin talks us through the tasting

He has a passion for Pinot Noir

Carolyn then ended the tasting by telling us we could order more of the wines to drink with supper and also any of their other wines should be care to. We also were given a taste of their just about to be released Art of Creation 2014 Chardonnay which has herbal notes and full of golden apples, crisp citrus and elegance

Laden vines

Car park in the vines!

Remington Norman was enjoying the tasting

This is a special boxed set of their two Art of Creation wines, the Pinot Noir and the Chardonnay, available on the farm

Supper arrives and it was the best duck we have had in years in the Cape. Apparently it is sourced from Wild Peacock and is free range. It was accompanied by red cabbage (classic with duck), a beetroot puree, pinot noir grapes and a cranberry jus and served on Boulangere potatoes and shiitake mushrooms. Such a good match for the Pinot Noirs.

Dessert was a savoury panna cotta, a strange shiitake tuille, goats milk cheese hard and soft with roast figs, pomegranate aruls and a blueberry soup. The figs were delicious with the slab of panna Cotta

The sunset down the valley is always a slight worth seeing

Carolyn and Daniela checking the tweets

We had a long chat with the Chef Warwick Taylor about his food and the pairings

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2015

Riesling (and Rarities) Rocked at Hartenberg

We started on Saturday at Hartenberg on the Bottelary Road for this annual gem of a festival. They only sell 500 tickets so we always feel honoured to be invited, and they sold out again. It is held in their beautiful gardens and this year they added the Rarities to the Riesling and there were some really interesting wines to taste. Lots of food was available to taste and we were provided with two enormous picnic boxes.

Directions to the garden

Humour on a warm day

We arrived nice and early and this was the scene at 12 noon as the festival opened

A view of Hartenberg’s vines

Wimpie from Groote Post having a quick bite while serving us their two Rieslings

Hárslevelü from Lemberg in Tulbagh was really different and so enjoyable we may well buy some. It is fruity, waxy, very silky soft but with a good dollop of acidity and couldn’t be identified as anything familiar, which we see as an advantage. We hope more will be planted. It's normally found in Hungarian wines

On to taste the classic Thelema and Sutherland Rieslings and their Viognier-Roussanne full of peaches marzipan and pears and nice soft tannins.

More people arriving and discussing the merits of the wine

A warm welcome from Jordan who showed The Real McCoy 2014 Riesling with lots of terpenes and honey but bone dry. Nice to see them back as they have stock this year but not much, so if you love, buy soon

Then it was suddenly one o’clock and time for the Gewürztraminer seminar presented by Paul Cluver. We tasted three vintages of their Gewürz and they were remarkably different which shows how climate sensitive this grape can be. Hartenberg have this wonderful “fresco” map of the farm showing where all the wines are grown, in their tasting room

A collection of old Montagne (the original name) and Hartenberg wines

Ann Ferreira was one of the organisers of the festival and she supervised the seminars

These were the wines we tasted. The 2011 was so typical of the variety bursting with roses, Turkish delight and marzipan with love clean, crisp, fruity freshness. The 2012 is full of limes and lemons with a little rose and some terpene and crisp acidity – it was a warm year. The 2014 has rose and spice and, unusually, some salty licorice. Crisp with soft floral notes. All are food wines and pair superbly with hot and spicy and aromatic dishes

Paul Cluver explaining how to grow the grape and turn it into this marvellous wine

Our tasting samples

Some new acolytes

Lots of rapt attention while tasting

Back to the festival; we visited Pieter du Toit on the Cederberg stand and marvelled at the Ghost Corner Semillon  -full of peas asparagus, layers of citrus, clean and elegant - and the Cederberg Bukettraube 2014

Pieter enjoying the day with a fan

Then we found the Jordans looking happy on the Paul Cluver stand with Jonathan Snashall, Georgie Prout of Glen Carlou, Paul Cluver and his sister Liesl

Another happy welcome from Young Winemaker of the Year Jacques Erasmus on the Spier stand, for a taste of their Ideology Riesling 2012

Christophe Dehosse of Joostenberg restaurant on his food stand with his menu for the day. We had a lot of these delicacies in our picnic boxes

We stopped for our picnic with Eppie and Norman MacFarlane.

This was the food provided for one person! Charcuterie, cheese, good rolls, a salmon paté, a caprese salad, humus, potato salad, bread and butter pickle and, for dessert, pineapple and meringue

It was lovely sitting on the lawn; the weather was warm but not too hot, no wind and everyone was having fun

Live music for the event

Our last wine was the Anthonij Rupert Semillon: Perfumed, with a full on layered mouth of fruit and very elegant. Of special mention was also the Simonsig Roussanne which has spun sugar candy, limes & lemons with spice and honey, and the Nitida Semillon which was also loved at our Semillon tasting at our wine club this week full of green pyrazines with perfume and crispness – such a good food wine.

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2015

150129 Main Ingredient's MENU - Darling, Festivals, Green electric power, Gazpacho

Sunbird agapanthus breakfast

In this week’s MENU:

 This week’s products: Sherry vinegars

 High summer and Harvest at Ormonde and Groote Post

 A busy weekend of wine festivals

 Green electricity

 Landau du Val

 This week’s recipe: Gazpacho

 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      Many Spanish dishes, including the gazpacho we include this week need Spanish Sherry vinegar. We have aged Sherry vinegars, all excellent. Like balsamic vinegars, they increase in concentration as they age. Find them here

High summer and Harvest     Harvest has begun in our winelands and we have guests from overseas. We love taking them on wine tours and sightseeing trips and we do always do the normal round of what to see in the Cape. But did you know that there are several smaller wine areas which don’t get so many visitors and who will make you incredibly welcome. Our guests have been here for a while, so planning a trip to an area they have not visited before was special. Which led us to Darling.

The day began warm and clear and we only took just under the hour to get to Darling on the Malmesbury road. Our first stop was to Ormonde where Zia du Toit welcomed us with open arms and a tasting with Riedel glasses was set up in the cool tasting room. Zia is about to move to Lammershoek as marketing manager and we wish her great success. Read on

It’s a busy weekend     There is so much on in the Cape in Harvest time. None of you should be sitting at home with nothing to do. This weekend, we will be at Riesling & Rarities Rocks at Hartenberg on Saturday and then dash to the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, which will be holding the second annual Hemel-en-Aarde Pinot Noir Celebration and we have been invited to Creation for a vertical tasting in the evening. We will be back in Stellenbosch at Delheim on Sunday for their Start of Harvest Celebration. We might see you at all or some of the above. We can’t get to Constantia Fresh, but wish we could. It is at Buitenverwachting and many other farms have events on – have a look at our Events Calendar. There is also the Stellenbosch Wine Festival to visit this weekend.

Energy is the all-consuming topic right now, with “load-shedding” (Eskom speak for blackouts) inconveniencing everyone. Our power went off from 6.30pm to 2am a few days ago. This situation, the result of government neglect and ineptitude, will probably continue for several years. We are already using gas for cooking and solar energy for our hot water, and have now decided to invest in a photovoltaic system with battery backup, which should reduce our dependence on Eskom to almost nothing. We have several potential suppliers and are waiting for final quotes, but it looks as though the monthly repayment for a suitable installation, financed through our mortgage facility, will cost about the same as our average monthly electricity bill. Many other households have decided to take similar action and the suppliers have all been swamped. One told me he is receiving 400 email enquiries per day. Several wine farms have already taken this step with great success. We’ll keep you posted.

This Week’s Recipe     If you are like us, you are living on salads and quickly prepared food. It is just too hot to be in the kitchen cooking over a hot stove. The fruit is marvellous, we have fresh fruit salad for breakfast every morning and at the moment is has mango, litchi, fragrant raspberries, nectarines, kiwis and melon. Dips with crudités, olives, cheese, grilled fish and meat and cold soups are the order of the (rest of the) day.

Tomatoes are so beautiful at this time of year that one of our favourites is a simple tomato salad using heritage tomatoes of all shapes and sizes, dressed with torn basil, a little balsamic and good green olive oil. The best use of good ripe tomatoes is of course the classic Spanish Gazpacho – I do my prep in a cool place like our deck or in front of TV.

Gazpacho

1.5 kilos ripe tomatoes – 2 slices of stale white bread – 2/3rds of a cup of good extra virgin olive oil - 1 peeled cucumber – 1 small red onion – 2 or 3 peeled cloves of garlic - 1 red peppers & 1 green pepper (deseeded) - 2 or 3 T sherry vinegar – salt and freshly ground black pepper – a little sugar

Make a tiny slash on every tomato and put in a large bowl. Pour boiling water over them to cover and leave for five minutes. Drain and peel the tomatoes (this is not essential but makes a much better texture). Soak the bread in a little water to soften, then squeeze out the water. Roughly chop up the tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and onion and put into a liquidiser with the oil, bread and the garlic and blitz. You may have to do this in a couple of batches and mix well in a bowl. Add a couple of tablespoons of the sherry vinegar and then taste. It depends on how acidic the tomatoes are. You may need more if they are very sweet, you may need a little sugar if they are sharp. Season to taste and put into the fridge in a non-metallic bowl to chill. It will be thick.

To serve

Have approximately 500 ml of ice water ready and add it to the soup just before serving. (You need to add about a third of the quantity of your soup. )

You can garnish (or serve for guests to help themselves) with chopped cucumber and peppers, Spanish ham, crisp bacon, croutons or chopped hard-boiled egg

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.

29th January 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.

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