Digital Sommelier

NamaqualaNdThe Flowers, The wine AnD The terroir top teN

Franschhoek’sSeven Chardonnays

Budget Top 10And Wine Prices in SA

Irene WallerFranschhoek Winemaker at La Bri.

SUMMER 2012-2013

DIM.SUM.VINXOXOO XOO XOOX

WorcesterFarms the size of small

European countires.

NamaqualandThe Folwers. The Wine.The

Terroir Top Ten

Merlot Pinotage

Chenin Blanc Bubblies

Cultivar ReviewsINCOMPLETE

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Not another wine guide!

Ten USPs for Neil Pendock Digital Sommelier.

2,000 wines were tasted blind (1) by geographical region (2) in situ (3) made

from regional grapes (4) by two people (5). Entry was free (6) and no sponsorships (7) were accepted. Recommended wines are

profiled (8) as mixtures of maritime, inland and mountain styles and matched (9) with appropriate foods and cooking methods.

Written in English rather than aggro argot, this is an indispensable guide for consumers

(10) rather than an industry telephone directory or train spotting log book.

Neil Pendock

http://neilpendock.com@NeilPendockNeil Pendock

Chritopher BatesJacquin Hansi Blackadder

Neil PendockAníbal Coutinho

Jason ParkerKathy WilsonOliver AndrewsNeil PendockMichell WestHanzel MorganJohan van HeerdenCarlo JacksonMari MooreLuke TaylorSam SmithJohan van HeerdengoTo! MultimediaTeresa WilsonEncore DesignsBrenda MullerSteven GrayMartin van den Berg

Cacod Studios

[email protected]

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INCOMPLETEIf you must rate wines, you have to rate them blind. For us this is obvious and not negotiable. That accepted, like deadly sins, there are at least seven ways to lay out a wine guide:

1. Alphabetically. Telephone directories do it, as does the leading sighted wine guide. The benefits are lexicographic sorting; the disadvantages are you need to know that Alex Dale’s Black Rock is made by the Winery of Good Hope, somewhat unhelpfully listed under “T” for “the”.

2. By cultivar. Which is how bottles are arranged on supermarket shelves and restaurant wine lists. The benefits are obvious if you know you prefer Bordeaux to Claret, or Chenin to Steen, but can be confusing with blends which are increasingly making the running. It’s also confusing when you taste in the Cederberg or Johan Reyneke’s Polkadraai biodynamic beauties, where unexpected flavours pop up all over the place and Sauvignon Blanc tastes like Chenin and vice versa.

3. By appellation. Which is how wines are arranged in French supermarchés – Burgundy and Bordeaux in different aisles with the Loire and Rhône on opposing gondolas. And somewhat surprisingly, in Australia too, with Dan Murphy’s in Melbourne very Olde Worlde indeed. In fact Alan Pick even labels his Pick’s Pick “product of Afrique du Sud” to get up there with Argentina, Andorra and Afghanistan on a Tesco shelf. Who will be the first to go one better with “product of Africa Borwa” which even beats Azania?

4. By price. Which is how consumers shop, once they’ve decided between bubbly, stickies, red, white and rosé.

5. By taste. Which is how chefs would do it. Let’s put grassy wines (Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc, unwooded Chardonnay) together and far away from the coffee/mocha club (Pinotage, Shiraz, Cabernet… you name it, Tiaan Burger can make it for you in Wellington). After all, when it comes to stickies, the amount of residual sugar versus acid is way more important than cultivar. A lesson some wine competitions have yet to learn.

6. By vintage. Which is how historians would do it.

7. By winemaker. Which is how fans, groupies and bother

boffins would do it: anything by Eben Sadie and the Swartland Independent together. Also a useful algorithm for fashionistas for whom wines are a surrogate for a piece of the winemaker – it’s the Bacchanalian version of the celebrity chef syndrome.

For a consumer, a combination of options 2 and 4 makes sense: cultivar and cost, as this is how shoppers operate on a budget. But prices are increasingly a moveable target, with massive discounting a way of life. Just ask Johan Wegner, the young Yul Brynner lookalike behind GetWine, a wildly successful online wine retailer.

With wine tourism such a burgeoning field of endeavour, we opted for options 2 and 3 with 4 always at the back of our minds. Our mission statement is to signpost a terroir trip around the Winelands and we unearthed some fabulous vinous gems in the process. Welcome on board!

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cannot accept responsibility for any damage, injury or inconvenience that may arise therefrom.

We would like to thank all readers of Neil Pendock Digital Sommelier!

Columns Namaqualand 18

Franschhoek 50

Worcester 64

Contents

13 Aníbal Coutinho

14 Matching Food and Wine

16 Wine Prices

30 Gideon Theron

40 Top Ten Terroir

56 Irene Walker

69 Dr. Alvi van der Merwe@NeilPendock

Follow Neil Pendock on Twitter for the latest wine news.

INCOMPLETE

Neil Pendock Digital Sommelier Summer 2012-2013 13

A word from co-driver/taster/lleague

Aníbal CoutinhoTalking about odds and coming from the country of cork, may we say that finding exactly the same still wine, regarding its sensory and biochemical data, in two different bottles of the same brand and vintage is like wining the lottery? Obviously the differences will grow enormously if we compare different brands and places of origin. Wine is a biological and natural product, with its own life & death cycle, just like any human being. But, as well as in Social Sciences, we may find groups and patterns of sensorial proximity that will allow us to define wine typicalities.

Numerous scientifical studies have succeeded in differentiating between wines according to their geographic origin, based on the wines’ sensory properties. However, during research for a Master of Science, scarse evidence was found of works that questioned wine regions profiling, based on similar sensory characterization of their respective wines. A blindtasting of over 2000 South African wines of origin is a refreshing approach and a solid database towards new and helpful ways to profile terroir and its place on consumer’s choices.

Is this awareness of the South African wine regions a worldwide strength or is it just local? Living, working and mentoring in Portugal, I was blessed with Neil Pendock’s invite to taste and contribute

to his new Terroir Wine Guide. The quality of Portuguese wines is being constantly confirmed in major international wine competitions. Portugal is gaining big space on top international magazines and this is due to an intensive PR effort that is managed mainly by ViniPortugal, the Interprofessional Association for the Promotion of Portuguese Wines. A recent study from UC Davis confirms, despite all efforts, that consumers worldwide don´t discriminate over Portuguese terroirs: referring to an application of a wine knowledge quiz including 15 multiple-choice queries to 190 American wine consumers selected by their willingness to pay for a bottle of wine costing at least $40, all questions regarding Portuguese regions and/or cultivars where poorly answered, performing way under average. In the same study, researchers used sensory descriptive data to profile Wine Gurus (namely Robert Parker) and their preferences were placed under scrutiny. Results show that those Opinion Makers were able to profile wines from USA and France on multiple regional categories while only one category included all Portuguese wines. I think the same conclusions apply to South African wines.

The most recent data on Portuguese wine exports confirms the anonimicity of Portuguese still wine (Port is a fortified wine and earned a different

statute worldwide) envisaging a low cost driven business with an average price of approximately €1 per litre.

The setting for this Terroir Wine Guide to the South African Winelands is, therefore, the enormous gap between an historical and self-conscious offer of several wines of origin – W.O.– and a global demand unable to understand those wine regions and/or unwilling to value the multiple South Africa wine typicality.

I have published several Portuguese wine guides (some of them with Neil) and, through those books and lectures, have tried to set an intermediate stage of three macro-regions that would encompass all Portuguese wine regions, generating three Portuguese wine profiles: Atlantic wines, born and raised in freshness and humid temperate climates; Mountain wines, naturally concentrated and balanced; and Southern (Northern Hemisphere) wines, typical round and sweet Mediterranean juices.

This new project will show a new and easy approach to the South African Terroir wines and, as in Portugal, will be considered the ultimate reference for the Wine Industry but mostly, for sommeliers, trade buyers, sales persons and, most important of all, wine lovers, wine tourists and consumers.

Wine Pairings

14 Neil Pendock Digital Sommelier Summer 2012-2013 Neil Pendock Digital Sommelier Summer 2012-2013 15

It’s all about triangles and hearts. Like those symbolist paintings Kevin Atkinson did in the swinging sixties, collected in a major retrospective at the National Gallery in Cape Town in 2013.

Nature loves a trinity and religion, too. There are three primary colours red, green and blue from which every other colour can be made. The vinous analogue is maritime (blue), mountain (green) and inland (red) wines from which every style can be fashioned. No wonder the South African Winelands form a geographic triangle.

We originally wanted to call inland appellations “continental” until a Stellenbosch marketer remarked “continental sounds too European” like

those Viennese cafés that washed up in Hillbrow in the seventies. Still Europe was the mother block which supplied the first vines for a wine industry at the southernmost tip 360 years ago.

The English language needs five vowels to make all the words that Shakespeare wrote although Wikipedia does list 310 vowelless words with “twyndyllyngs” meaning twins the longest. Interestingly enough, the French decadent poet Arthur Rimbaud (called “an infant Shakespeare” by Victor Hugo) who visited the Cape for a brief shining moment in the 1880s, assigned colours to the vowels with the three that interest wine lovers: O (for Ocean) coloured blue, U (for Uplands or mountains) coloured green and I (for Inland) coloured red in the poem Vowels:

I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips in anger or in the raptures of

penitence;

U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas, the peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows which

alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;

O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds, silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels: O the Omega!

the violet ray of His Eyes!

Some appellations are located near a Vertex of Terroir: Lambert’s Bay is exclusively maritime and is thus blue (a point recognized by Thys Louw if you consider the colour scheme of

his Sir Lambert Sauvignon Blanc) and Calitzdorp is totally inland (and inbred in that forgotten valley called Die Hel) while others are mixtures. Stellenbosch is maritime and mountain and the corresponding colour is yellow – green and blue while the Swartland, literally “black land”, is a mixture of all three archetypes (white), negated.

Food can be represented in a triangle which corresponds to a wine Triangle of Terroir™. Shellfish and salmon trout work best with fresh maritime wines as does pork belly, as the high acids hydrolyse the fats. Game is paired with intensely flavoured mountain wines as the high tannins are antioxidants which

aid digestion of protein while higher alcohol continental wines are indicated for grilled beef and chicken or sweet sauces, as sugar and alcohol molecules are similar in shape.

Wine may be chemically decomposed into a triangle with vertices tannin, body and structure at the top, sugar and alcohol bottom right and acid freshness bottom left. The trick of matching food and wine is to align the triangles. A task for a Pythagoras of the Palate. One day restaurant wine lists will recognize that pages of Sauvignon Blancs are like those palate cleansers from the eighties served between courses: a waste of time. You need a maritime model like

Fryer’s Cove 2011, a mountain goat like the Cederberg 2011 and an inland identity such as the Du Toitskloof 2012.

Each appellation plots inside or at the vertices of a Triangle of Terroir™ and thus has a corresponding unique colour and appropriate style of food. We rate wines according to a heart system, ♥ which is simply an upside down triangle. Or if you read Arabic, an upside down five, hence five hearts ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ are those special bottles that blow your doors off.

If a wine is recommended and included in the guide, it gets two hearts: Anibal’s and Neil’s. If it’s really special, we score it from ♥ ♥ ♥ to ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥.

and wineon the triangles of MiM

Matching Food

Wine Prices

16 Neil Pendock Digital Sommelier Summer 2012-2013

“4 Star Dombeya – R21” said the subject line from [email protected] one winter morning and for a moment I’d thought he was adding to Michael Fridjhon’s human misery after he noted in Business Day “when a South African wine retails for less than R25, it can be made only on a truly industrial scale and generally at the cost of human misery – such as underpaid farm labourers or growers becoming ever more impoverished. Since there is a great deal available in the marketplace at this price point, it is clear that not all the wine business is joy and bonhomie.”

Although Barnus Steyn, who makes a balanced Colombard at 12.5% alcohol from grapes grown at 51 tons/ha, is not complaining. Flood irrigated by the Groot Gariep and paid R1500 a ton, he nets around ten times the income those gnarly old bush vines make for the millionaires and billionaires in Franschhoek and can make a nice living and pay his workers a living wage on R25 a bottle.

But alas, it turned out the Dombeya Cabernet 2008 was

reduced by R21 (down to R69, a signifier of “joy and bonhomie” in some circles). It got four stars sighted in Platter and a doozy of a tasting note “Mocha, cacao dust, black current (sic) are all balanced by Jasnmin (sic).” Is this a record for the most typos in a tasting note and I wonder what cacao dust tastes like – chocolate? No wonder there’s such a demand for 140 character tweeted tasting notes.

There is a whole cellar of misery-free wine available, as we discovered on our blind tasting peregrinations. Johan Wegner, proprietor of internet retailer Getwine notes “the big dilemma for SA producers is that we see many, many export orders destined for the UK or the East cancelled or only partly taken because of the global financial problems. The problem is that these producers now want to get rid of these export wines at any cost. These export orders get dumped in the local market which creates havoc as these wines are now priced below the more well-known cheapies and only increases the wine glut that we are already experiencing.”

There is a black south-easter howling through the Winelands at the minute: bottled exports are in the toilet, marketers are in denial and an unsympathetic government is threatening to ban alcohol advertising. Nature has been turned upside down and vines are budding in the middle of winter. Things are now so bad, estate owners are even attempting to resuscitate their moribund Estate Owners Association, hoping that terroir will save sales.

Which is the only thing low yield, high cost, low visibility, highly idiosyncratic appellations like Elgin, Hemel en Aarde, Constanta (and others) have going for them. When irrigated vineyards on the Orange River can produce over 50 tons of grapes per hectare and Stellenbosch battles at 10% of this, the only way for Stellenbosch to demand a survival premium is to produce wines that taste of place. Something SA producers are increasingly starting to do.

Wine Pricesdim.sum.vin

This is the DSV Intro Line

dim.sum.vin

Neil Pendock Digital Sommelier Summer 2012-2013 1918 Neil Pendock Digital Sommelier Summer 2012-2013

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diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.

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DSV Sub-Heading

SAMPLE

SAMPLE

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metaphor too far when you note he is married to Maria.

When it came to food, the hearts of various animals were de rigeur while the Lucky Star fishcakes “made from a recipe from a 70 year old ousie in my kitchen” served in a tin can, were a future classic. The décor was Rocky Street Yeoville circa 1970 with Andy Warhol’s silkscreen of Chairman Mao with a slash of scarlet lipstick confirming the arrival of the yellow peril in the Platteland. A Chinese theme that saw them match dim sum with local ingredients to Swartland wines at CROK (Cultural Revolution on Kasteel) in the old Dutch Reformed church hall in Hoofstraat on the Sunday before China’s national day, 1 October.

Dishes such as wild boar terrine with crab apple and mint sauce paired with the Annexkloof SMG 2010 Mediterranean blend confirmed it is not necessary to pay Franschhoek prices to enjoy a spicy Swartland red, as this one costs all of R55. Dutch importer Fons Aaldering, who supplies exotic ingredients to 2600 Asian restaurants in the Netherlands, was so impressed, he signed up M-K to prepare dim sum for twenty Chinese restaurant owners coming to the Winelands later this month.

MoerbyKultuur

unlocks your inner Vespa“Moerby Kultuur” is a pair of delicious double-entendres: mulberry and to throw together (as in a recipe) while culture could be in the yoghurt or a ballet. It started off as a catering partnership between Free State ballet dancer Mynhardt Joubert and Johannesburg designer and part-time farmer Eugene Nortje who met in Rosie’s, a bar in De Waterkant of Cape Town, and decided to cater corporate lunches to pay the bills.

The pair unlocked their inner Vespas and headed off to Riebeek-Kasteel, that bohemian village in the Boland that is more affordable than Franschhoek and closer to Cape Town than Greyton. Bar Bar Black Sheep was the name of the restaurant they started next door to the Wine Kollective bottle store and Crisp, an organic vegetable shop.

The food was unashamedly Boerekos; the wine list, unique. “This is the best book I’ve ever read,” enthused one dame in terrifying black about the wine list, “the descriptions are terrific.” From comparing Adi Badenhorst’s whites to the enthusiasm Elvis had for sleeping pills and describing Eben Sadie as “the baby Jesus of SA wine,” it was compiled by searching for an appropriate image rather than a string of adjectives. Although the Eben theme is perhaps one


Food Heart

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SAMPLE

In a nutshell:

♥ Best value for money maritime style Sauvignon Blancs in SA.

♥ Home to largest organic producer in SA.

♥ Fresh and spicy Shiraz a feature.

♥ Super Pinotage from Namaqua Wines for R25 a bottle.

Back Label: “Big trucks proceeding past this point, do so at their own risk” says the sign 10km short of Citrusdal on the road north from Ceres, through the Kouebokkeveld. Which reminded me of the notice British eccentric Lord Berners erected outside the folly in the garden of his Oxfordshire country pile. “Members of the public committing suicide from this tower, do so at their own risk.”

Neither was joking, as the precipitous track through the Cederberg Mountains resembles those Taliban supply routes in Afghanistan, with US drones replaced by hungry Lanner Falcons and Pale Chanting Goshawks. It was lorries that got us into this mess in the first place, as one had overturned in the Nuwekloof pass between Tulbagh and Gouda and Google Maps had redirected us onto the rustic R303 as replacement for the stop-and-go rich N7 highway. Suffice to say, driving to the Olifants River wine appellation can be a challenge.

NamaqualandIf the Swartland marketing slogan is “small berries, big flavours”

then Namaqualand should adopt “big lorries, small prices”.

Terroir Credentials: Made from grapes grown 320km north of Cape Town, elephant wines typically have warmer, more tropical flavours than other maritime appellations such as Durbanville and the Hemel & Aarde Valley, yet a shared proximity to the cold Atlantic Ocean adds a refreshing natural acidity that makes them fresh and exciting. The boutiquification of the region is still in its early days (giant co-operatives like Lutzville and Namaqua Wines dominate volumes) with one noticeable result: it is hard to find a wine priced over R100, the entry level in tonier terroirs.

Wineries: Olifants River wineries are some of the largest in the country. The SA tourism website www.satour.co.za somewhat breathlessly notes “production is dominated by co-operatives and the Vredendal Co-operative alone crushes more grapes than the whole of New Zealand in one harvest!”

Well Vredendal Co-op transformed into Namaqua Wines many moons ago and New Zealand has ramped up production and

now dominates the market for grassy Sauvignon Blanc in the UK in the interim. In the south of Namaqualand, Stellar Winery is the largest organic wine producer in SA.

Ethically traded, it salves conscience as well as the palate and inner personal trainer. In the western approaches, Bamboesbaai and Lambert’s Bay are home to two of the greenest Sauvignon Blancs in the Cape, real doppelgängers for the grassy Kiwi style that sells so well in Knightsbridge, but at a fraction of the price.

Best Wines: Our blind tasting of 68 wines unearthed five gems including five wines rated five hearts. There is a great value 2011 wooded Chenin Blanc for R55 from the appropriately named Lutzville Diamond Collection and a 2010 Pinotage costing all of R25 from Namaqua Wines. Less well known is the 2010 Shiraz from Stoumann’s Wines (R70) whose logo is a tortoise, the meat ingredient in waterblommetjiebredie before Karoo lamb became popular.

Namaqualand Wines

Namaqualand


Terroir Top Ten

1. Namaqua Pinotage 2010 R25

2. Klawer Cellars Chardonnay 2011 R28

3. Klawer Cellars Pinotage 2011 R28

4. Klawer Cellars White Muscadel 2008 R30

5. Klawer Cellars Red Muscadel 2009 R30

6. Klawer Cellars Hanepoot 2008 R30

7. Lutzville Diamond Collection Chenin Blanc 2012 R33

8. Namaqua Red Muscadel 2011 R35

9. Stellar Organics Chenin Blanc 2012 R35

10. Stellar Organics Rosé 2012 R35

Best Wines

1. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Sir Lambert Sauvignon Blanc 2012 R65

2. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Namaqua Wines Spencer Bay Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 R75

3. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Bellpost Shiraz 2008 R71

4. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Lutzville Diamond Collection Shiraz 2010 R65

5. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Lutzville Diamond Collection Chenin (wood) 2011 R55

6. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Lutzville Diamond Collection Ebenhaeser 2010 R85

7. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Namaqua Wines Spencer Bay, The Blend 2008 R75

8. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Fryer’s Cove Sauv Blanc 2011 R90

9. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Lutzville Pinotage 2010 R40

10. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Stellar Organics Sparkling Wine 2012 R55

Our blind tasting of 68 wines unearthed five gems including five wines rated five hearts. There is a great value 2011 wooded Chenin Blanc for R55 from the

Budget Top Ten

appropriately named Lutzville Diamond Collection and a 2010 Pinotage costing all of R25 from Namaqua Wines. Less well known is the 2010 Shiraz from Stoumann’s Wines (R70) whose logo is a tortoise, the meat ingredient in waterblommetjiebredie before Karoo lamb became popular.

EdenNamaqualand in early spring, a kaleidoscope of colourful flowers, including the famous Namaqualand daisy.

Hundreds of flowers, seemingly magically, pop-up from the previously barren landscape for a short period every year attracting both local and international tourists to the ‘flowering desert’.

A part of little Namaqualand, known as the Richterveld, is a national park and a World Heritage Site, with the surrounding areas having one of the highest percentages of Afrikaans speakers in the world, more than 95% of the population. You might also come across the Nama people speaking the original Khoekhoe language, with its intricate system of click sounds.

A LITTLE SPECIAL

Best WEE


Best Bed

Voorsorg Guesthouse (027 213-2243) is on the right between the Namaqua Wine Spruitdrift Cellar and Vredendal town. It is one of those conglomerations of face brick chalets beloved of Afrikaans cultural movements in the seventies. Clean and great value.

http://www.voorsorg.co.za/

Budget Top Five

Luke to provide a table of a couple of B&B’s sorted by price from http://www.namaquawines.com/article/accommodation_14

Best WEE: Die Keldery Restaurant at the Namaqua Wines Cellar in Spruitdrift offers a cross-section of wines from across the appellation for sale. Now when did you last see the competition’s products offered for sale in a Stellenbosch tasting room? Which confirms the common sense approach to wine followed in Namaqualand.

The bright restaurant offers fresh bistro food. The pickled fish is recommended as is the bobotie.

Open: Monday-Friday 8am-5pm; Saturday 9am-3pm.

Tasting Charge: free.

Directions: GPS coordinates: S 31.40.50 E 18.30.55.

Head north for Klawer on the N7 from Clan William. In K-town, it’s a case of “all roads lead to Rome” as you’ll see Vredendal signposted straight ahead on the R363 as well a right turn onto the R362. Don’t turn, stick to the R363 and the cellar will appear on your left, 3km before Vredendal, with stainless steel tanks looking like a mini sensory Sasol.

Contact Details: www.namaquawines.com; Tel. 027 213 1080.

For evening dining Paiters Grill (027 213 1877) is located above Capitec Bank in downtown Vredendal and their Roquefort salad mixes black olives with tinned pineapple and peppadews. It is brilliantly complemented by a bottle of Sir Lambert Sauvignon Blanc 2011 for R95 which echoes the flavours. The salad comes in two sizes, small (R50) and large (R60) which is family friendly. The schnitzel special offers two small for R100 or two large for R120 which, with a polystyrene doggy bag, provides tomorrow’s lunch. Probably one third the price of a Cape Town equivalent.

Wine Empowered Establishments INCOMPLETE


Neil Pendock talks to Gideon Theron about Namaqualand, making wine and his favourite wine style.

Cellarmaster at Lutzville Cape Diamond Vineyards

Gideon Theron

Wineheart


Neil: How would you describe Namaqua terroir?

Gideon: We have quite a variety of different soil types. The producers plant cultivars on these selections due to the direction the product will be utilised. Grapes planted on the alluvial silt and alluvial sand soils are mainly utilised for supply to rebate wine production for distillation as well as dry white in bulk sales. The wines that we do bottle and sell as cultivar wines are mainly from two soil types namely:

1. Deep red sand on specific rootstocks.

2. Broken-heart pan with lime.

In the Namaqua region, each sub-region has pockets where the cool west coast climate has a direct influence. We then plant selectively in these areas. The wines are also treated separately. Our row selections is important as for the cool breezes to be effective during night time. Surely in our region it is a combination of soil with weather patterns that have the influence on selection for planting cultivars. We do not have problems regarding diseases during ripening as our rainfall is in the average of 110 mm / year. We are totally reliable on water supply by the channel system. The

farmers can control the irrigation.

Neil: Positive things about making wine in Lutzville as compared to Paarl?

Gideon: Once again I must state that each wine region have something different and the producer must then utilise this to his best on his wines. Our biggest advantage is that we have moderate temperatures during daytime which ensures a constant ripening process, but then the night temperatures drop down to between 8 to 10 ° Celsius. The grapes turn into a total resting phase and the carry on with the ripening in day time. Our ripening period is longer than normal. Although we start harvest by end January we only finish by mid April. By that time we struggle to complete our red wine fermentation in the stainless steel tanks outside due to the temperatures dropping at night time.

We have close relationships with our producers and all the vineyard blocks graded as Reserve and Premium receives detail attention along with our Viticulturist. Prior to harvest we visit these vineyards, and decide on the receive date of these grapes. This ensures that we do receive the grapes at optimal ripeness. We have all the required and state of the art equipment to produce high quality wines. The

emphasis must be on the control from the vines to the vineyards and then selective actions in the Cellar. Our wines develop with maturation, whereas the wines from Paarl have a fair amount of yeast influence. This is very positive, as our wines then compete better on submissions. With the stretched out harvesting detail focus can be kept on practices on cultivars.

Neil: Negative things about making wine in Lutzville as compared to Paarl?

Gideon: This is always a difficult one to answer. Two factors:

1. We miss out on the wine industry activities, due to the distance.

2. We also miss out on regular exposure and trends within the industry.

Being at a big winery with a daily crush of 1 000 ton, one can easily drop back into a mode of producing wine on a bulk level. One must work on the fact that each tank is special and must be treated as such.

On a lighter side, I do have a less social programme and consume less wine than in Paarl, but the positive is that you spend much more time with your family.

Neil: Your favourite wine style?

Gideon: On the white side it is definitely Sauvignon Blanc as I have always had a passion for the wine. The wine must be crisp, clean and fresh with the typical cultivar flavours supporting the wine. The acidity must be well balanced. One must feel like having another bottle after the first one.

For reds, I used to be a fan of Shiraz, although I have changed to any well-structured red. I prefer it to have the varietal aromas complemented with soft wood. The wine must have tannins, but no green tannins or overpowering ones. The wine must be able to mature as well.

Our project that you’re reading is a local implementation of an annual wine guide we write in Portuguese each year, travelling around the different appellations with tastings arranged by the various Portuguese wine commissions. For a wine to be recognized as a true expression of Dão, for example, it is blind tasted within the appellation and is certainly something for SA wine routes to consider in order to develop regional wine profiles.

For starters, regional certification would be a neat resolution of the current cause célèbre on the Paardeberg, where Craig Hawkins has had his Testalonga El Bandito Cortez rejected for certification, a second time. Perhaps a Swartland Wine Route panel would be more sympathetic – even to Anton’s SAWIS Chenin.

Women & Winemaking


Women PowerAnnareth, Annelize, Ellen, Elzabe, Frieda, Jenny, Jolene, Melissa, Melody, Michelle, Monika, Taryn and Trudy are the most dynamic band of ladies since the Spice Girls. And while exports of bottled wine may battle overseas (down over 10% last year) - this in spite of WOSA being dominated by the fair sex - when it comes to local marketing, the various regional wine routes are helping to keep local sales bubbling, up 4% in a year.

While winemakers are predominantly male, wine route managers constitute an active sorority who meet monthly at alternating venues to compare notes. Not that wine routes are the only bodies producers use to reach local consumers, but they are certainly well supported by producers. Some Co-ops on the unfashionable side of the Du Toitskloof Mountains cough up R150k a year to fund them.

While winemakers are predominantly male, wine route managers constitute an active sorority who meet monthly at alternating venues to compare notes. Not that wine routes are the only bodies producers use to reach local consumers, but they are certainly well supported by producers. Some Co-ops on the unfashionable side of the Du Toitskloof Mountains cough up R150k a year to fund them.

But they are certainly not Big Boys Clubs run by Girls as annual membership of the Swartland Wine Route, for example, starts at R2,500 a year. Some of that appellation’s highest fliers, like Adi Badenhorst and Chris and Andrea Mullineux, are members, so that’s only a couple of cases of wine for them.

These Swartlanders are also among a group of boutique producers on the Paardeberg who recently formed the Swartland Independent. The Independent, somewhat surprisingly, decided to join the system and take a stand designed by the bohemian boekhouer of Riebeek-Kasteel, Anton Espost, at Cape Wine 2012. It is sure to be the most provocative stand at the fair, even if Anton does leave his oxidized Chenin called “SAWIS” out of the equation, as he is battling to get it certified.

Anton’s loud “gypsy brothel” aesthetic has provided the vinous

highlight of Ross Douglas’s Food|Wine|Design fair in Hyde Park, the most stylish wine show in a crowded calendar, for the last couple of years.

We had first-hand experience of the power of these wine route women at the end of July as we embarked on a blind tasting of terroir wines in situ for this guide. And again in September when we completed our task with over 2000 bottles opened in the process. We invited that lavishly punctuated sommelier/events organizer Jörg Pfützner, but he bowed out with family commitments after his children starting asking who he was.

Co-ordinated by Annelize from Paarl, we started off with Michelle in a rainy Durbanville at Cassia Restaurant on Nitida farm and ended July with Jolene in the boardroom of the Swartland Co-op which has the largest spittoons in the business – four foot high lengths of blue pipe that play an ascending scale of notes as they fill with expectorated wine during an extended tasting. Annareth, Annelize, Ellen and Jenny followed in September.

Our idea is to map SA terroir by blind tasting various wine styles in the different appellations. So only “wine of origin” vintage wines – no tank or barrel samples and no multi-appellation blends like many of the big brands.

Not that they’re worse, just not place specific. Next year we plan to invite winemakers to blind taste along with us and hear our comments first hand – a feedback which is missing from the various pay-to-play wine shows and quite frankly inexcusable, given the lavish entry fees charged. Perhaps even invite some wannabe sommeliers to do the whole trip with us. Nobody pays to enter and we’ve no sponsorship. We must be mad!

Sisters are“Doing It For Themselves”

in Winetourism

Wine routes are a valuable resource for the whole SA industry and deserve to be used far more than they are. The annual Stellenbosch tasting at Summer Place in Johannesburg is eagerly looked forward to by bribeable Metro cops who man the profusion of roadblocks hastily erected around the venue when the winemakers roll into the Big Smoke. A lockdown Langlaagte style.

Judging by the quality we tasted blind, Bot River would be most welcome at the Bunny Park in Benoni, Vredendal should hire some Venter trailers and trek to Vereeniging while that Durbanville does not kuier with its namesake Durban, has been a colonial confusion that escapes me. With amazons like Annareth and Annelize at the wheel of the bus, success is assured.

Pinotage gets a bum rap for hard tannins when it’s actually Merlot that can produce tannin monsters and minty ones, too. When the Oscar winning wine road movie Sideways hit the big screens back in 2004, US Merlot sales tanked 2% while Pinot Noir boomed 16% in the Western US thanks to the anti-Merlot riff of Miles, one of the characters. Sales have now stabilized and in SA there is plenty to chose from. Our choices:

Terroir Top Ten

Cultivar Reviews


Love it or hate it but don’t ignore it, Pinotage is the taste of South Africa. A wild and aggressively fruited cross between Pinot Noir and Cinsaut as old as Jay Gatsby, it can also make wines of incredible finesse and complexity with old Lanzerac vintages from the sixties pure Burgundy, blind. First bottled 50 years ago, it has been something of a local hero ever since.

Made in a variety of different styles from light, fresh and fruity rosés to dikvoet traditional cuvées fermented in open cement tanks. From Darling to De Rust, the Groot Gariep to Agulhas, all bases are covered and no bushes are left unbeaten around.

A versatile dining companion, some of the Cape’s most famous chefs recommend novel pairings. Pete Goffe-Wood proposes Tukulu with a Thanksgiving turkey with all the trimmings and Bruce Robertson suggests a smiley (boiled sheep’s head) with a Pinotage from the Stables in KwaZulu-Natal. Kitchen versatility is taken to the limits and then some.

Pinotage is the USP of a broader SA wine industry and a unique calling card that anyone remotely interested in the fermented fruit of the vine should try at least once before they die. Our selection:

Merlot

Pinotage1. Arabella 2011 from Robertson. Sweet plums and cherries with some

spicy mint.

2. De Grendel 2009 from Durbanville. Cold tea and liver pâté sandwiches. Tobacco, vanilla and dried prunes. Mouth-filling, long lasting.

3. Durbanville Hills Rhinofields 2009 from Durbanville. Red candied fruit and bell peppers. Judicious oaking. Elegant, young tannins, good aci-dity and sweet balance.

4. Elgin Vintners 2009 from Elgin. Spicy savoury with a silky texture. A true treat.

5. Kleinhoekkloof 2008 from Robertson. Marmite nose, good intensity, herbal mint and spicy oak.

6. Saxenburg Private Collection 2009 from Stellenbosch. Salty minerali-ty, liquorice and grilled peppers.

7. Shannon Vineyards Mount Bullet 2010 from Elgin. Pétrus of the Over-berg. World class. Ripe, spicy fruit turned up to the max. Big and boo-ming with silky long finish.

8. Thelema Reserve 2009 from Stellenbosch. Spicy sweet oak nose, creamy elegant palate, persistent, world class.

9. Veenwouden 2011 from Paarl. Grassy and herbal, tangy red plums, rich and dense flavours.

10. Yonder Hill 2009 from Stellenbosch. Elegant, persistent, minty che-rries and plums.

1. Bergsig 2010 from Breedekloof. Minerality, chocolate, fresh red berries with an elegant texture.

2. Durbanville Hills Rhinofields 2011 from Durbanville. Lively fruit cinnamon spice and charry oak. Dried prunes and candied red fruit. Floral fresh notes. Pleasant sucrosity, elegant. A gourmand wine.

3. Fairview Primo 2010 from Paarl. Exotic nose, elegant, sweetly fruited, floral with an underlying chalky minerality.

4. Kanonkop 2010 from Stellenbosch. Intense, dense, classy, huge length, pastille style.

5. Lanzerac Pionier 2009 from Stellenbosch. The perfect pinotage: intense red cherry flavours, dense and spicy.

6. Lutzville Pinotage 2010 from Namaqualand. A real crowd pleaser. Toasty, green banana, ripe red fruit, sweet spices. Elegant, sugary and fresh.

7. Neil Ellis Vineyard Selection 2010 from Stellenbosch. Toasty oak, redcurrants and mulberries, raspberry jam and chocolate.

8. Rijk’s 2008 from Tulbagh. Sweet and spicy oak, dried stone fruit

9. Wellington Wines La Cave 2010 from Wellington. Complex, black plums, densely fruited

10. Wildekrans Reserve 2010 from Bot River. Minty berries, black plums and candied red fruit. Superior oak management and seamless balance.

Sauvignon Blanc makes the most popular single varietal whites in SA. It is a chameleon cultivar that ranges from acid fresh in Lambert’s Bay to gentle oak moss complexity in Constantia, ethereal lychee in the Klein Karoo and flinty finesse in Elgin and the Hemel en Aarde Valley.

We tasted 186 dry Sauvignons blind and several noble late harvest examples, like the excellent Highland’s Road 2011 from Elgin. There were also a couple of straw wines. All of them had a definite geographical coatrack on which to hang their hats. Not that terroir by truck makes inferior wines. On the contrary, as we found out at a blind tasting of 18 Sauvignon Blancs at Vrede en Lust in Franschhoek.

Our favourite in the comprehensive line-up compiled by Dana Buys, was the De Morgenzon DMZ 2012, made from grapes sourced from four different terroirs. As winemaker Carl van der Merwe reports, the fruit comes from a particularly cool and windy pocket in Elgin, a vineyard in Durbanville, Faure and the Stellenboschkloof (the De Morgenzon estate).

As far as making the wine goes, Carl’s modus operandi was high turbidity juice, careful but not overly reductive handling, cool inoculated ferments in stainless, regular fermentation lees suspension for 4 months post ferment. 5% was naturally fermented in barrel and back blended for weight. The result is spectacular and the bouquet elicited an obvious and public reaction from the tasters.

That said, an unexpected statistic was reported by wine marketer par excellence Colyn Truter, on his Leg of Wine blog. Of the 42 gold medal and trophy winners at this year’s Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show, fully three quarters (31 wines) were origin specific wines, just like the 2000+ we tasted blind for this guide.

For inclusion, a wine has to be voted “in” by both of us. Something that happened 107 times in the case of Sauvignon Blanc. So the cultivar achieved a hit rate of 58%. But as expected, there are huge terroir related differences. In Constantia, we included all nine of the wines tasted for a hit rate of 100% while in Tulbagh the hit rate was 25% with the single wine included, the incredible Lemberg Surin 2011.

A rating shared with the Sir Lambert 2012 from Lambert’s Bay and the Klein Constantia Perdeblokke 2010 from Constantia.

The concept of a hit rate is an interesting one for consumers faced with a selection of un-tasted Sauvignons on a restaurant wine list, for example. Constantia is a sure thing while Stellenbosch, with 20 wines included out of 28 tasted, is also a good bet with a hit rate of 71%.

Substantial flavour profile and style differences demonstrated by Sauvignon are tailor-made for competitions seeking to compile a Top Ten. But obviously care should be taken that those pungent dusty green peppers of Darling and Durbanville (for example) do not overshadow the more subtle oak moss/mineral wines from Constantia – something that clearly did not happen at the FNB Top Ten Sauvignon Blanc Competition this year, with the victor’s laurels shared between Cape Agulhas, Breedekloof, Cederberg, Darling, Durbanville, Elgin, Langeberg-Garcia and Stellenbosch.

Price and availability are also important and should also be factors in compiling a consumer Top Ten. Marmalade Cat in Darling lists Ormonde Ondine 2010 for a mere R60 (in a restaurant) which makes it a winner in my book, especially when paired with a gluten-free pizza (half anchovies, half salmon) on a rainy Friday night.

Sauvignon Blanc

Cultivar Reviews


1. The Berrio 2011 Trail dust and greenpeppers on the nose, lemon and lime pith and peel on the palate. Delicious. A southern benchmark.

2. Chamonix Reserve 2010 from Franschhoek. Toasty oak, rich nose with floral buds, apricots on palate. R145 a bottle.

3. Jordan “The Outlier” 2009 from Stellenbosch. Rich and ripe, grassy floral, dusty dried apricots and figs. R99 a bottle.

4. Klein Constantia Perdeblokke 2010 from Constantia. Floral, fine, limes and quince marmalade, late harvest aromas, soft palate, icy fresh.

5. Merwida 2012 from Breedekloof. Tropical fruit plus asparagus and green peas, sweat, tangy and persistent. R38 a bottle.

6. Oak Valley 2011 from Elgin. Grassy citrus with a lingering finish and a creamy palate. A Sauvignon Blanc for Catherine Deneuve. R90 a bottle.

7. Ormonde Ondine 2010 from Darling. Asparagus, tinned peas, citrus pulp and zest, creamy mouth feel, tangy, good food wine. R55 a bottle.

8. Sir Lambert 2012 from Namaqualand. Tangy ruby grapefruit with a finely judged balance between sweet and sour and huge length. R65 a bottle.

9. Spioenkop “1900” 2011 from Elgin. Fresh floral nose and spicy broad palate starring lemon pith and limes. Lovely and long. R62 a bottle.

10. Webersburg 2011 from Stellenbosch. Toasty floral, creamy, complex, long, a world class wine. R85 a bottle.

Chenin Blanc


Cultivar Reviews


SA Chenin Blanc producers must have felt like characters in an episode of the Special Victims Unit TV sitcom in July after the savaging they received in the New York Times. Under the headline “a wine that isn’t what it used to be” Eric Asimov puts in his size 12s after tasting 20 SA Chenins. “The grape is not being celebrated here. These have veered into a drink, rather than a wine” was one of the nicest comments. Which is weird, as at the end of last year, the single SA entry in the Wine Spectator Top 100 was Wendy Appelbaum’s De Morgenzon Chenin Blanc 2009.

Poor Annette Badenhorst, point girl for WOSA in New York and one of the few WOSA operatives with an increased budget this year, up R20k to R4.25 million. Which will probably be spent in vain now as two thirds of SA exports Stateside are

Chenin, according to Jacques

Jordaan, who secured a listing for his Simonsig Chenin in the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station in the Big Apple.

Now while one swallow may not a summer make, damning SA Chenin on the evidence of twenty swallows is the height of irresponsibility. Was there a Hope Marguerite from Beaumont in the lineup? A Cederberg, Botanica, Cartology, Skurweberg, Delaire, De Trafford, Donkiesbaai, El Bandito, Cape of Good Hope, Mrs. Kirsten, Lammershoek, Oldenburg, Wildekrans, Reyneke… Heck, many a US athlete drank a glass of Olympic Chenin from Stellenrust after they’d won gold. It’s like drinking

Entre deux Mers and calling Bordeaux a boring appellation.

We tasted ten times as many terroir Chenins as Eric, so here is our list of the top ten that he might want to try before he pronounces further on the most widely planted white grape varietal in SA.

1. Boland Five Climates 2012 from Paarl. Pear drops, boiled sweets and apricots, floral nose and palate. R27 a bottle.

2. Bosman Optenhorst 2011 from Wellington. Ripe tropical, pineapple, tangy peaches and cream. R160 a bottle.

3. De Trafford 2011 from Stellenbosch. Completely different style: almond and lemon cheesecake, honey, persistent. R160 a bottle.

4. Kasteelberg 2010 from the Swartland. Floral nose, round palate, ripe oranges and herbal tea.

5. Lutzville Diamond Collection (wooded) 2011 from Namaqualand. Citrus pulp and zest, fresh grassy notes, ripe white fruits with hints of sweet pastry. Creamy, fresh and elegant. R33 a bottle.

6. Oldenburg Vineyards 2011 from Stellenbosch. Grippy, long, fabulously creamy flavours, toasty oak, spicy minerality. R118 a bottle.

7. Palesa 2012 from Worcester. Finely fruited, fresh grass and minerals, long finish. R33 a bottle.

8. Rijk’s Touch of Oak 2010 from Tulbagh. Citrus, minerals and candied white fruits. R80 a bottle.

9. Vrede en Lust Artisan 2011 from Elgin. Quince jam, citrus zest and spice. Huge concentration of flavour. A winner. R130 a bottle.

10. Waterkloof Circumstance 2011 from Stellenbosch. Coffee mocha toasty sweet fruit, yeast, citrus and nuts. R90 a bottle.

Cultivar Reviews


Allan Mullins, wine consultant to Woolworths, chairs the annual Amorim Cap Classique Challenge and the reason for all this corporate interest is not hard to find. Méthode Cap Classique

is the fastest growing category in Woolworth’s extensive wine offering. No wonder Master Card sponsors two MCC festivals to the tune of R900,000 a year. Our selection of sparkling wines.

View more cultivar reviews - Terroir Top Ten in the

following editions of Neil Pendock Digital Sommelier

Bubblies

1. Graham Beck Cuvée Clive 2007 from Robertson. Sparkling rich toasty peaches and candied yellow apricots with a dry finish. Captivating.

2. Groot Constantia 2008 MCC from Constantia. Apples and pears, fine citrus, creamy palate, persistent.

3. Krone Borealis 2009 from Tulbagh. Perfumed, red and black berry, fruit fresh and zippy citrus.

4. Nicolas Charles Krone Marque I from Tulbagh. Complex and rich with layers of cherry flavour, plums and nuts.

5. Saronsberg 2009 from Tulbagh. Bone and yeast tangy tropical fruit, hints of honey.

6. Tulbagh Winery Muscat Ottonel Doux 2012 from Tulbagh. Citrus and tropical fruit dominated; a walk in a rose garden.

7. Villiera Monro Brut 2007 from Stellenbosch. Toasty, intense limey citrus flavours, fine chalky bubble.

8. Villiera Brut Natural 2009 from Stellenbosch. Fresh and lively nose, ripe yellow fruit, pear drops and baked apples, chalk and smoke.

9. Weltevrede Philip Jonker Brut The Ring 2007 from Robertson. Sparkling limes and yeast, sweet pastries and hints of caramel with a lingering chalky finesse.

10. Windfall Mendola 2007 from Robertson. Cream, nuts and chalk.

In a nutshell:

♥ Fine dining capital of SA

♥ World’s first wine route on a tram

♥ Annual Bastille Day festival a highlight

Franschhoek

IreneWaller

Winemaker at La Bri and our Franschhoek Wineheart Neil: Do you look to France to make wine in Franschhoek?

Irene: Franschhoek is steeped in French Heritage, but I don’t look to make French wines in Franschhoek. Our terroir is unique in this valley and wines should be an expression of what this terroir can offer. For me it is more a case of respecting the way in which the wines are made - adhering to the same principles of wines with structure and aging potential.

Neil: Are terroir wines becoming more popular among Franschhoek winemakers as opposed to making wine from grapes brought in from other regions?

Irene: There is a trend amongst some of the younger winemakers to look to the valley for their grapes as we believe that Franschhoek has the potential. They believe that ‘identity’ is the key to Franschhoek’s success. Ultimately though we all strive to make the best wine possible and if this requires sourcing grapes from other areas we do so.

Neil: How important is wine tourism for business?

Irene: Wine tourism is essential. Franschhoek is seen as a destination that offers the full package – world class restaurants, five star accommodation and award winning wines. This tourism is an integral part of our business structure - not only from a marketing and exposure point of view but through cellar door sales as well. Wine tourism benefits all sectors of our community and there is a strong drive within the valley to build on this cross-sector networking and collaborative effort.

Neil: Your favourite wines style(s)?

Irene: I am a bubble girl at heart – Blanc de Blanc of preference. I tend to prefer wines that express elegance and terroir (as opposed to wood) – a classic Syrah Viognier (co-ferment!!) and on the whites Viognier.

Irene waller wIth jake the jack russel and peggy-sue the staffy, who s Imply loves merlot grapes (and lemons).


Wineheart

Franschhoek

A Duo of MCCs

♥ ♥ ♥ La Motte 2009 toasty nuts and baked apples♥ ♥ ♥ Boschendal 2007 vigorous, fine bubbles, tropical and yellow stone fruit, brioche nose

A Trio of Sauvignon Blancs

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Chamonix 2010 toasty oak, rich nose floral buds, apricots on palate♥ ♥ ♥ La Motte 2012 delicate floral nose, lemon palate with some asparagus and chalk

La Couronne 2012 sweaty nose, fresh pears and passion fruit on easy-going palate

Seven Chardonnays

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Rickety Bridge 2011 extreme almonds, nutty (hazelnuts) with lively minerality ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Chamonix 2011 fresh and light, zingy acidity, minty pear drops and creamy citrus

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Môreson 2011 dusty wood, ripe apricot palate, tangy fruit with a long finish♥ ♥ ♥ Glenwood 2011 nutty butterscotch honey cream

Grande Provence 2011 floral, pollen with spicy oak and creamy palate Mont Rochelle 2009 bacon, sweet fruit, limes with hints of spirited oak

La Bri 2011 nutty almonds, cheesy and tangy fruit compote

A Quartet of Sémillons

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Landau du Val 2008 camomile tea and dried flowers, ripe and full, world class♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Rickety Bridge 2008 singed hair, electrical fault nose, wonderful ripe apricot palate, dense yet fresh

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Franschhoek Cellar 2011 dusty thatch and limes, toast and spice, fruit sweet and tangy ♥ ♥ ♥ Glenwood 2010 exotic geranium, herbal, minty fynbos

A Duo of Viogniers

♥ ♥ ♥ La Bri 2011 creamy almonds and herbal fynbosMaison 2011 light peach blossom, easy-going

A White Blend

♥ ♥ ♥ La Vigne floral 2011 nose, light and fresh floral palate with fynbos and lemons

One Rosé

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Holden Manz 2012 Provence-style: rich strawberries, fine berries

A Duo of Pinot Noirs

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Chamonix 2010 spicy olives, intense candied cherries and red plums, tangy spice ♥ ♥ ♥ Haute Cabriére 2009 light cherries, savoury, powdery tannins, minty elegance

Ten Shirazes

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Allée Bleue 2010 complex nose, sweet fruit, ripe, fresh and tangy peach peel, spicy chocolate, silky palate♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Haut Espoir 2006 super concentrated, tobacco complexity, world class

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ La Vigne 2007 resinous eucalyptus style, mint and cherries♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Lynx 2010 sweet fruit, plums, silky palate, some mint

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Haut Espoir 2007 red candied fruit, sweetly fruited, savoury, fynbos liqueur ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Maison 2009 peach peel and silky tannins, very Rhône-ish with a chalky minerality

♥ ♥ ♥ La Bri 2009 leather and grippy palate with some after-8 minty chocolate Holden Manz 2010 dusty bacon nose, tangy wine-gum fruit

Franschhoek Cellar 2010 intense black plums and licorice, very oakyMont Rochelle 2008 very ripe strawberries, leather

A Quartet of Merlots

♥ ♥ ♥ XOXOXO 2010 green and red bell peppers, olives and extra spice, grippy Dieu Donné 2009 spicy green olives, sweet and minty oak, chewy tannins

Rickety Bridge 2009 bacon, candied red and stone fruit with extra oak Mont Rochelle 2006 finely fruited, sweet cherries

A Trio of Cabernet Sauvignons

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Haut Espoir 2005 rich, ripe plums and prunes, tobacco complexity broad palate Grande Provence 2009 coffee mocha milk shake Rickety Bridge 2008 minty, savoury fynbos, spicy

A Trio of Bordeaux Blends

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Grande Provence 2007 sweet and minty oak, chocolate, plums and currants plus bell pepper chutney♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Holden Manz 2009 sweetly fruited, tangy minerality with tobacco, chocolate and mint

♥ ♥ ♥ Chamonix 2010 tangy berry fruit, lively palate and intense

An Exotic Red Blend

Akkerdal 2010 salty mineralty, savory, sweet red berries plus spicy citrus

A Brace of Stickies

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ La Vigne NLH 2011 creamy lemon curd, dried apricots and honey♥ ♥ ♥ Holden Manz Shiraz Port 2009 baked red berries, chocolate and mint


Best Wines

Not for Sale to Persons Under the Age of 18.

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hoto Oesfees


It was Elvis Costello, husband of jazz goddess Diana Krall, who memorably noted that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture – a really stupid thing to do.” That said, how do you describe the annual oesfees (harvest festival) on the Solms-Delta wine estate in Franschhoek?

The first was opened by that pocket-sized national treasure, David Kramer, in his trademark porkpie hat, red velskoene (from the Tarzan shoe factory

in Tulbagh) and pantsulas with braces. Crouched over guitar, bottom stuck out like an ostrich, swivelling on one leg like a cartoon stork, he could be dancing about Rem Koolhaas. He headlined again this year.

Back in 2008, Kramer summed it up as “history”. So when his biography appeared last year with no mention of the fees, question marks were thrown at the authors, a couple of Stellenbosch academics. Especially when they claimed that “local folk legends Des

and Dawn Lindberg [are] still active on the South African music circuit despite having surrendered much of their critical edge since the 1660s.”

This fees is definitely not a Des and Dawn Houghton soirée. Tannie Grietjie from Namakwaland, singing in a helium-filled voice emanating from deep within the billowing folds of a shocking pink Voortrekker ensemble seated on a white plastic garden chair, could be back in the 1660s with Van the Man in his het Kasteel, slaves laying out farms. When

she squeaks out “hy’s ‘n lekker ou Jan” Van Riebeeck springs to mind. Although the one about “droë pramme” (dried-out embonpoints) requires serious cultural credits.

Many farm workers are descendants of slaves and they come to eat traditional dishes involving offal and Aromat and to dance. That doyen of Kaapsekos (Cape Cuisine), François Ferreira, insists

“there’s no such thing as boerekos, it’s just modified Cape Malay cooking. Look at bobotie and boereboontjies – they’re just Malay boonchies.” The assortment of traditional treats bubbling in giant bain-maries at the fees makes his point, in excelsis.

The chicken and vegetarian breyani could be from a street vendor in Johor Bahru, it’s that good while the patat served

alongside snoek pie is dusted with cinnamon with doorstops of braaibrood and apricot jam to fill the gaps. The farm’s Klein Handjies crèche is serving vetkoek and curry while the estate’s Fyndraai Restaurant offers bees afval kerrie (beef offal curry).

A well-known local Halaal crew called La Jez will present a range of Halaal dishes. For the sweet of tooth, there is the fat

Bump that Bum, Numb: Five Vintages of the Solms-Delta Oesfees

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Best Bed

“ ”It is the only event in the Winelands that involves the entire

community.

BEST BED F-HOEK

trinity of melkkos, melktert and malva puddings plus koeksusters and hertzoggies made by Stefan at Stall #5.

Always popular on the wine list is Cape Jazz Shiraz, a low-alcohol carbonated wine that pays the bills for Solms-Delta owner, international neuropsychoanalyst of world renown, Professor Mark Solms. Ice is available by the large plastic sack full and adding it has the triple effect of chilling, diluting and rehydrating after a vigorous rieldans.

This jol is special. Especially as it reclaims Franschhoek for a day from those swallows who roost in a European village in Africa.

It is the only event in the Winelands that

involves the entire community.

Not that politics is allowed to poep the party. When Stef Bos headlined last year and compared Somerset West veld fires to the social upheaval that one day could explode in the squatter camps of the Cape Flats, one PDD (previously disadvantaged dancer) jumped up and said she’d had enough of politics and wanted to dance.

Before his awesome electric piano set, Stef was summonsed by one ample aunty who wanted to know how much he would charge to perform at her church bazaar. Stef suggested Valiant Swart, the mystic boer, as being more appropriate. But aunty had heard of Valiant and thought him well beyond her budget, anyhow.

2011 was a break-through year after the fees was discovered by establishment

Afrikaners. The Sanhedrin of Afrikanerdom, the ATKV (Afrikaans

language and culture association), grasped it to its ample crimpolene bosom. The 80-year old cultural movement swooped down on Solms-Delta in a bont bussie (multicoloured minibus taxi) and planted multicoloured flags outside the port-a-loo village. CEO, Oom Japie Gouws, welcomed brown Afrikaners and their indigenous music into the broader familie and pretty soon stamp daai boude lam (bump that bum numb) had paunches pulsating and bollas bouncing. Uniquely South African; totally brilliant!

INCOMPLETE

The VIneyard

hoTel & Spa

Best WEE


“I don’t send my workers out in this” grumbled Stef du Toit, senior counsel from Johannesburg who owns Mont du Toit estate under the Hawequa Mountains in Wellington. But he was “shushed” by his date, enthusiastic Canadian Norma Ratcliffe of Warwick fame, made of sterner stuff perhaps, and soon we were all looking like bluebottles washed up by the Liesbeek in our Paarden Island ponchos.

The Vineyard Hotel & Spa in Newlands is a Tardis of a property with 200 rooms nestled under Table Mountain and a string of villas scattered along the course of the Liesbeek River that bisects the garden. Yet it looks like the country cottage of a Georgian Lady (George III) with a few rooms added on. Which is what it is; the erstwhile home of Lady Anne, wife of Andrew Barnard, Colonial Secretary at the Cape, who lived in Newlands from 1797-1802.

A bit of a cougar (she was a dozen years older than her husband) she had some very modern advice for ladies: “upon my word, virtue seems to be a very needless article at the Cape, girls thrive better without it than with it & make much better colonists.” Advice preserved for posterity in the Lady Anne alcove in the hotel, along with some haunting

watercolours painted on her many hikes up the mountain.

The Vineyard is also one of the few hotels in the Winelands to take the stuff seriously. Which is quite appropriate, as the Constantia Valley, where it all started 360 years ago, is five minutes away. A four star establishment at the top of its game, it’s so much more authentic (parliament hinges on the hall linen cupboards) than those five star palaces with ice in the urinals.

The hotel is well named as instead of fairies, it has a vineyard at the bottom of the garden. Planted by Lady Anne and resurrected four years ago by GM Roy Davies who notes “we’re often asked to get involved in promoting spirits and cocktails but wine is really all there is for us and what we take seriously.”

He is not joking as two wine dinners a month are scheduled and a wine tasting every Monday afternoon. “Next week we’re sending our schedule for 2013 to the Platter guide so they can include it.” In August, Oldenburg from the Banghoek Valley was up. Owned by Adrian Vanderspuy, who lives in Geneva, the venue would have been approved of by his granny Una, who died five days short of a century the previous month. Her Old Nectar garden is the most beautiful in the Cape, if not the whole world. Grandson missed the funeral as he was dodging the world’s largest plant, the corpse flower amorphophallus titanium, in the jungles of Burma.

Sixty Sauvignon Blanc vines were planted on a terrace above the Liesbeek in mini-Douro formation, along with forty of Semillon. A

reflection of the popularity of Bordeaux-style white blends in SA today, whereas Lady Anne would more likely have planted Muscat d’Alexandrie. Probably sourced from her friend Hendrik Cloete junior who made the famous Vin de Constance from them on Simon van der Stel’s old Constantia farm. A venue for such uproarious parties, Lady Anne was once forced to hide behind the curtains.

Vineyards need to be pruned each year, so one stormy weekend in August, viticulturalists from the five partner estates (Simonsig, Waterford, Meerlust, Klein Constantia and Warwick) arrived with secateurs along with some well-heeled and better shod farm workers from the southern suburbs. Plus two from Port Elizabeth, who bought their berth on the Bid-or-Buy internet auction site.

Best Bed: The Vineyard Hotel & Spa newlandsHead of pruning was François Malan from Simonsig who was concerned about snipping in the rain as this is what did for the apricot industry in Wellington in the sixties. The trees were all infected with tandpyn (the fungus Eutypa lata, called “dead arm” Down Under and “toothache” in the Boland, both lethal in apricots) and today our apricots come from

The hotel is well named as instead

of fairies, it has a vineyard at the

bottom of the garden.

Turkey or Prince Albert, if you don’t shop at Woolworths.

“Horticulturalists from the hotel looked after the vines for the first year” noted Malan “and they may know everything about flowers but about vines, nothing. They pruned them like trees – 1.5m tall with shoots extending with arms out like a tightrope walker on the top wire of the trellis. We had to cut them right back and so lost a year.”

Delayed by tightrope topiary and shading of the vineyard by massive oaks, one of which fortuitously fell in the Liesbeek the previous week. The tree canopy is slowly opening up as the Vineyard’s enthusiastic gardeners descend on riverside gardens as houses are sold and Davies offers to “clean up” the river frontage, showing good neighbourliness hard to find today. While the Liesbeek

littoral will never be as sunny as Sea Point, a first crop is confidently expected next April.

A bounty F&B manager Matt Deitchman and manager of The Square Restaurant and garagiste winemaker David Wibberley will be sure to feature as wine pairing is a feature of dining at the Vineyard. They grow their own herbs and veggies so wine is a logical next step and an unbeatable locavore USP. Wine and meat cooked sous vide, or in a bag, if your French is not yet up to speed. Boil in a bag does amazing things to texture and is thus a technique very popular with some of the older guests who’ve said goodbye to their own teeth.

For food pairing turned up to the max, there is Mike Basset’s temple of gastronomy on a budget, Myoga. Seven courses (and only one is a

sorbet, so he’s not joking)

for R225 effortlessly matched to the fermented fruit of the vine by Lisa Gorge, one of the few sommeliers in the Cape not Swedish. Johannesburg diners will feel at home in the Alice in Wonderland chairs, pioneered in the Park Hyatt in the nineties, steel tables and Market Theatre arches.

80% of diners opt for the degustation menu and 40% of them go the whole hog and take the wine pairing for an extra R170. Well worth the price if you’re staying at the hotel or have engaged Excite Taxis to avoid making the day for PC van der Plod and his roadblock. My selection of seven dishes ended up with an all-white wine cast (two Rieslings, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc and Ratafia) while my date was paired with Barbera, Bukettraube, Syrah, Riesling and Red Muscadel which Mnr. Cloete would have enjoyed. Confirming that pedestrian this wine pairing is not.

Best WEE


website advert

Best Country Plate


“Bubba”, n. A boere redneck. The nickname shared by 43rd US President William Jefferson Clinton and Schalk-Jacobus Botha when SJ was making granite tops in Nashville, Tennessee. SJ is now the Bubba behind Bubbas, a Southern barbeque (braai) joint cum Mexican cantina one block up from the Groot Gariep in Upington. American wife Virginia greets diners in vlot and idiomatic Afrikaans, with the neatest Yankee accent.

The couple met in the Kruger Park where he was a game ranger and she was setting up an NGO, back in

2002. Cooking on safari was all part of the job description and after Cupid called long distance, emigrating from Waterpoort near Alldays to Nashville to start a South African restaurant, seemed like a good idea.

Alas SA cuisine failed to catch on, so as Virginia remembers “we ended up in the granite business. In Nashville we had a bunch of ‘good-ol-boy’ type friends (you know – farms, four-wheelers etc.) and they loved to smoke meat. So I bought SJ a smoker for his 29th birthday and he started learning about smoking meats from friends, trial and error,

over the weekends. There is also a significant Latino population in both Atlanta and Nashville, and we worked with a lot of them over the years and learned about Mexican and Brazilian food from them.”

When their children, Bastian (5) and Zianne (4) hit school-going age, the Bothas decided they wanted a small town upbringing for their children and “the chance to walk in the sand without shoes. Something you can’t do any more in the USA where everyone is concerned with safety.”

So some names were put in a hat –

a Churascuria for Chavs in Upington

Sommelier Spittoon


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diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stetin vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.

Christopher Bates

SommelIerSpITToonheadIng

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Best Country Plate


Ellisras, Namibia, Maun (Botswana), and out popped Upington. Bubbas opened two months ago in a converted suburban house in Schroder Street (the main drag) in Upington. Palm trees instead of wisteria and mint juleps on hold until the liquor license is finalized. Until then its Orange River box wine met ys in Paris goblets. No Diners Club Winelist of the Year Award, yet.

How does Bubbas branding go down in deeply conservative Upington where the Spur, further up Schroder Street, is recommended as the best restaurant in town by locals? “They think it’s a crèche” grumbled SJ, a mistake easily made as there’s a wooden jungle gym outside, made by the same carpenter who made the restaurant tables and chairs which contrast with the big, flat, black TV screens in each room. “To keep

down costs” explains SJ. Doempies in die Dorp – a Boere Banksy - did the whimsical wall murals (a Harley-Davidson, a pair of cowboy boots).

What to do with the shells from the tiny buckets of monkey nuts on each table? “Throw them on the (sanded pine) floors” laughs Virginia. The menu is unashamedly meat focused. I started with Bubbas famous beef chili (ground beef i.e. mince, with beans and onions, R39.95) which was like a delicious desert-does-Hungarian goulash. I wondered idly whether the legumes in question were SJ’s famous Bubba-Q beans.

Abe Beukes, cellar master at Darling Cellars, called for a table salad of tomatoes, onions and cucumber which arrived with each slice decorated with a black olive. There are enchiladas, burritos, quesadillas,

crunchy tacos and even gumbo but Abe opted for the BBQ pork stacker with side, which translates to slow smoked pulled pork, stacked high (R54.95). There is so much protein, he couldn’t finish it.

I opted for the pile of steak (R120) – a meat sandwich of rump and picanye, skewered dramatically with a steak knife, à la Quentin Tarantino. SJ has the Upington butchers well trained – he takes three rump steaks, each with a big rind of fat, and barbeques them along with a Brazilian picanye of sirloin. Texture and flavours of the two cuts contrast and dusted with some cayenne pepper and some rough cut tomatoes, never has the cave man diet promoted by Professor Tim Noakes, tasted so good.

94 Schroder Street, Upington, Northern Cape

Tel: 054-331-0041 [email protected]

Open: Monday - Saturday: 11:00am - 9:00pm

Sommelier Spittoon


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dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea

rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctua sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, sit amet, consectetuer adipiscis est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Duis autem vel eum irconsequat, sit amet, consectetuer adipiscia sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hea s vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, sit amet, consectetuer adipiscindrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, sit amet, consectetuer adipiscirerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.

Jacquin Hansi Blackadder

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In a nutshell:

♥ Expect the unexpected, Pinot Grigio in particular

♥ Farms the size of small European countries

♥ Best value whites in the Winelands

Worcester

Background: Penny pinchers, the claustrophobic and fresh air fiends wishing to avoid paying the R26 toll at the Huguenot Tunnel can drive over the magnificent Du Toit’s Kloof Pass when travelling from Worcester to Paarl. The tightest of hairpin bends above the sheerest of cliffs are a monument to Victorian road inspector Andrew Geddes Bain. 1930s rugby springbok Alvi van der Merwe drove off the pass four times in his colourful life, one of 27 serious car crashes he survived without a scratch.

Which could explain why he’s remembered today in a causeway over the Breede River called Alvi’s Drift, and not in an Alvi’s Pass. Alvi started farming grapes back in 1928 and his grandson of the same name continues the noble tradition on a farm which has grown like Topsy into a 7000ha kingdom of wine,

to do, you may get no further. Alvi is a perfectionist with the search for the perfect cup of coffee (he bought his own commercial espresso machine), pizza and prosciutto (made from his own pigs) on the agenda.

Unique Selling Proposition: The Cape’s wine pundits are a notoriously sedentary bunch who demand free samples and gourmet blowouts before they will venture an opinion. Which makes the wines of the Worcester Wine and Olive Route, on the wrong side of the Paarl mountains, terra incognita and a treasure trove of underpriced gems.

Best Wine: Aussie Linley Schultz was previously head winemaker at Distell, largest wine producer in the land and used to buy grapes from Alvi. Today he is Alvi’s consultant winemaker and it shows in the sunshine-in-a-bottle style of

perfectly made wines.

The Viognier is arguably the best in the Cape while the Chardonnay follows the recipe Schultz applied to make Yattarna, the famous White Grange, an icon of Aussie winemaking. Local winemakers agree – voted “best wooded Chardonnay” two years running at the National Young Wine Show – it is oily, nutty, rich and fat.

In the red department, a 50:50 blend of Pinotage and Cabernet Sauvignon from the tricky 2008 vintage was crowned with gold at the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, confirming international appeal for Alvi’s wines which proudly fly the provenance flag. In a style Alvi modestly calss “traditional contemporary.”

Tastings: Tastings and tours are by appointment only, but there is

so much on offer in the shape of a 3000 ha game reserve filled with hartebeest, gemsbok, leopards, duiker, springboks (over 1000) and any eland the chairman of the SA demarcation committee has not yet shot, why not make a day/weekend/life of it?

Location: GPS waypoints Latitude S 33º 57’ 54.3” Longitude E 18º 43’ 59.5”.

Directions: From Worcester, take the R43 to Villiersdorp and then the Scherpenheuwel turn off. After that, either follow your GPS or ask for directions in your best Afrikaans, as there are no signs.

Contact details: alvisdrift.co.za.

Tel. 023 340 4117.

double the size of Paul Cluver’s Pinot Noir principality in Elgin.

Everything about Alvi’s Drift is XXXL: a profusion of wild flowers to make the west coast look like a sandy desert; annual production of 5.5 million litres of wine and even more milk from a herd of 2000 cows; seven kilometers of river frontage which make it a magnet for twitchers while canoeing may appeal to the inner ironman; 150 tons of cheese (the one studded with Madagascan green peppercorns is a stunner and the feta is a national champion) and 500 pigs fed on whey that ensures their meat is almost fat free.

Why Alvi’s? Ninety minutes from downtown Cape Town and you’re in the heart of a self-sufficient farming community, Amish without the horse and trap. Gateway to the R62 tourist meander, there are so many things

Best Cellar


http://www.alvisdrift.co.za/

Neil: Will the first Worcester icon wine be white or red?

Alvi: White – Chenin does very well in the area as well as wooded Chardonnay, Viognier and white blends. I believe this will be a chenin based blend.

Neil: Does Worcester have a USP when it comes to wine? Is there a tasteable difference between Worcester wines and those from the Breedekloof?

Alvi: Worcester is geographically a very big area with relatively few producers and consists of a lot of different terroirs and micro climates. The area has the ability to produce very good, affordable wines as well as more serious, higher priced wines across the spectrum.(It all depends on the market of the producer) I am always fascinated that more that 70% of wines awarded at the SA Young Wine Show, come from this area. The concern is this this does not convert into the bottle market. I would ascribe this to the difficulty in getting penetration

into supermarket chains. I believe the tasteable difference between the areas are dependent on winemaking styles en the area of the grapes. I believe there are the same similarities and differences between Worcester/Breedekloof as would be between Worcester and Stellenbosch for instance.

Neil: How important is wine tourism for business?

Alvi: Tourist activity in the Worcester area does not impact the Worcester wine industry that much directly because of our big producers that is not directly reliant on bottle sales. Wine tourism in South Africa will have a major impact in the future however because more and more wine is being exported and overseas people need to be exposed to our wines to grow markets. For smaller producers, private cellars and estates, cellar door sales can become very important as well.

It would however benefit the area and wine in SA greatly if more affordable quality wines would be

available in supermarkets. We can over deliver at most price points.

At present not a single bottled wine from one of the largest wine producing areas is available in Shoprite/Checkers !!! (Note the misleading TV advert)

Neil: Your favourite wines style(s)?

Alvi: Complex full-bodied Chenins and Chenin-based blends.

Wineheart

Neil Pendock Digital Sommelier November 2012-2013 75

from Alvi’s Drift is our Worcester Wineheart

Dr. Alvivan der Merwe Dr. Alvivan der Merwe

Worcester

The Pick of Worcester Whites

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Eagle’s Cliff Arendskloof Pinot Grigio 2012♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Alvi’s Drift Chardonnay 2011

Top Ten Worcester Value Wines

Brandvlei Chenin Blanc 2012 R19Brandvlei Ruby Cabernet/Merlot 2010 R20

Brandvlei Chardonnay 2012 R20Brandvlei Sauvignon Blanc 2012 R21

Aan de Doorns Chenin Blanc 2012 R22Aan de Doorns Colombar Effe-Soet 2012 R22

Brandvlei Hanepoot 2011 R27Stettyn Milltstone Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon 2012 R30

Eagle’s Cliff Cabernet/Merlot 2011 R30Eagle’s Cliff Chenin Blanc 2012 R30

A Trio of Worcester Chenin Blancs

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Eagle’s Cliff 2012 tangy fruit with good intensity of limes and passion fruit, nuts and spice Aan de Doorns 2012 fresh, clean tropical fruit

Brandvlei 2012 honest, no frills

A Quintet of Worcester Sauvignon Blancs

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Eagle’s Cliff Arendskloof 2012 complex nose, orange peel, good balance ♥ ♥ ♥ Overhex Balance Winemaker’s Selection 2012 soft palate, gently fruited

♥ ♥ ♥ Brandvlei 2012 fresh figs and citrus with long lime finish ♥ ♥ ♥ Conradie 2012 captivating aftertaste

Alvi’s Drift Signature 2012 juicy limes and lemons

A Quartet of Worcester White Blends

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Alvi’s Drift CVC 2011 rich, oaky, fresh fruit will age♥ ♥ ♥ Alvi’s Drift Signature Chardonnay/Viognier 2011 super fresh nose, juicy palate

Overhex Balance ClassicChenin Blanc/Colombar 2012 boiled sweets and lemon drops Stettyn Milltstone Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon 2012 very grassy, sweet fruit and green peas

A Five Heart Pinot Grigio

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Eagle’s Cliff Arendskloof 2012 leesy/oaky, rich tropical fruit with an extreme expression of minerality

A Trio of Worcester Stickies

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Brandvlei Hanepoot 2011 expressive fruit, cola nut, creamy palate Aan de Doorns Colombar Effe-Soet 2012 Ouma’s delight

Aan de Doorns Red Muskadel 2011 honeyed, clean, well fruited with quince and apricot jam

A Quartet of Worcester Chardonnays

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Alvi’s Drift 2011 toasty oak, sweet fruit, rich and creamy, good balance ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Eagle’s Cliff Arendskloof 2012 grassy nose, sweet palate with awesome minerality

♥ ♥ ♥ Brandvlei 2012 silky palate, generous oak, deep flavoursConradie 2010 honey and butterscotch, lively palate

A Worcester Viognier

♥ ♥ ♥ Alvi’s Drift Signature 2012 floral, delicate peach blossom subtle and gentle

A Worcester Rosé

♥ ♥ ♥ Overhex Balance Classic Shiraz creamy strawberries, candied fruit and citrus zest

A Worcester Cabernet Sauvignon

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Conradie 2011 lovely Cabernet nose, austere, prunes, long and dry finish

A Worcester Shiraz

Overhex Balance Winemaker’s Selection 2011 fresh cherry and plum fruit

A Quartet of Worcester Red Blends

♥ ♥ ♥ Brandvlei Ruby Cabernet/Merlot 2010 Good texture, grip and abundant fruit♥ ♥ ♥ Alvi’s Drift – Drift Fusion 2009 Trio of dense fruit, black plums, vanilla spice

Stettyn Shiraz/Cabernet Tomato leaf and paste, walnut tannins, rooibos tea Eagle’s Cliff Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot 2011 Lively red fruit style, fresh

A Duo of Worcester Pinotages

♥ ♥ ♥ Conradie 2011 banana milkshake, lactic round palate with good fruit sweetness ♥ ♥ ♥ Overhex Balance Winemaker’s Selection 2011 light sweet fruit, elegant and fine


Best Wines

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Best Bed

BEST BED Worcester

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Summer Elegance at Pure

Best City Plate

The sunny veranda at Pure is a Mauritian sugar farmer’s breakfast alcove blown clean across the Indian Ocean by a summer cyclone and landed in an oasis of plane trees in Hout Bay. Less formal than the octagonal main room, the rattan chairs, bamboo ceiling, white wooden shutters and blond wood reeks of French sophistication and good bread. Which duly arrives on a Zulu headrest, polished by generations of curly coiffure. A work of art you can eat.

The Diners Club award winning wine list is like the rest of Hout Bay Manor: eclectic. Well priced Riesling from the Reingau; Château d’Yquem at the other end of the scale and an adventurous local selection of brands you’ve never heard of from good vintages.

The menu is small, but perfectly formed: four starters, five mains and five desserts. As is the chef, Philip Arno Botes, who pops up at the end of lunch in his kitchen whites, hungry

for feedback. “The trout came from Du Toitskloof” he ventured.

The fish was framed by four gnocchi, which looked like mini roast potatoes. There were some organically shaped oyster mushrooms that tasted like truffles. But that may have been the olive oil on the garden peas and knobbly asparagus spears – pure Morgenster. There was also a big blob of dill crème fraiche and some succulent salmon roe, fat enough to pass for ikura sushi. A spectacular dish (R135), well complemented by a tangy 2007 Markus Schneider Riesling Terrassen (R220) from the Pfalz.

For starters, Luke had the Caprese salad (R45) off the Pure Vegetarian Menu. PAB played a blinder, adding mint to the pesto while figs in the Balsamic was pure genius taking the acid edge off the vinegar.

My pan fried scallops with goat’s cheese, broccoli puree and pancetta crumble (R85) were three in number


“ ”Well priced Riesling from the Reingau;

Château d’Yquem at the other end of the scale

Best City Plate


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and admirably succulent. The menu omitted to mention the profusion of pumpkin seeds that provided an earthy textural accompaniment to the shellfish while Eartha Kitt provided vibrato on the muzak system: “let’s fall in love…” But like Narcissus, lovelorn lunchers beware! as the table top is mirrored and falling in love with yourself is such a bore.

The scallops were not overcooked, but then I’m of the opinion that the best way to eat them is sashimi style, preferably in Paris. A trick I learnt from SA Airways when Coleman Andrews flew the plane and Champagne was selected in situ. Now twenty bottles are

flown down to Santé in the Cape Winelands for the annual selection tasting. Rubbing Maldon salt into the wounds that it’s French fizz in first; sorry premium class. Not Méthode Cap Classique, even if the name for local bubbly is faux French.

Luke had the Pure Trio main: venison, quail and rabbit (R140). The latter free-range, from Wild Peacock Products, according to PAB. Is there any other kind of bunny? As expected, Bugs tasted like chicken (doesn’t everything unexpected from crocodile to catfish?) and was well matched by the 2009 Painted Wolf Pinotage called Guillermo. So named as the grapes were grown on the Swartland farm of Billy “the kid”

Hughes. Who hails from Argentina, where they call Billy, Guillermo. At R150, a pure steal as the previous week it was hailed a Top Ten Pinotage by ABSA.

Lunch was bookended by a cheese board of blue, Boerenkaas and Brie (R75) and an amuse bouche (complimentary) of smoked parsnip and honey roasted garlic that was as in your face as the Green Market Square décor of the rest of the Manor: Cecil John Rhodes desk with matching Congolese chairs and wall mounted Zulu shield and spear combination plus a towering totem pole lamp of enamelware. Eccentrically eclectic; totally over the top; totally terrific.

PURE at Hout Bay Manor, Baviaanskloof, off Main Road, Hout Bay

Reservations: +27 (0) 21 791 93 93 www.houtbaymanor.com/pure

Email: [email protected]

Opening Times: Tuesday - Saturday Dinner: 18h30 to 22h30; Sunday Lunch: 12h00 to 15h00

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