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How much? R39;
Where? Overgaauw Estate, Stellenboschkloof, 27 (0)21 881 3815;
Why? Global advertizing agency JWT pat themselves on the back for spotting bacon everywhere in their preview of 2010 made at the end of 2009. “Bacon was spotted in everything from flavoring syrup (from Torani) to more cocktails and desserts; L.A. even got a bacon themed food truck; and Jones Soda went as far as to release a limited edition bacon-flavored beverage.” Of course bacon flavored red wines have been popular for years, easily achieved if you mature them in medium+ toasted François Frères barrels.
With so many totally legal tasting tricks around involving coffee, bacon and chocolate, it’s becoming hard to find a red that tastes like… wine. Step up to the plate David van Velden, winemaker at Overgaauw, who of this impressive Bordeaux-inspired blend said “I wanted to express the cultivars (Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot) but didn’t want a chocolate bomb.”
David van Velden
How much? R45;
Where? Oak Valley Wines, turn left at the gnarly Elgin oak, 27 (0)21 859 4110;
Why? The launch of this wine at Mzoli’s, a township butchery cum tourist attraction in Gugulethu late last year, became something of a cause célèbre for Cape Town’s chattering classes as the launch went down a month after honeymooning Anni Dewani was murdered near the same venue, under mysterious circumstances. The internet was saturated with breathless postings about the event and even identities not invited, tweeted their dismay at being ignored. But among the nigh on 100 descriptions of this wine, I discovered the fatal flaw of social media – there is no content.
Mzoli's
Platter assistant editor Tim James publicly contradicts Christian Eedes’ Top Ten Sauvignon Blancs announced this week at an awards lunch so good, some judges only left at sunset. Which could be behind the curious NB which introduced the invitation to attend the Nedbank Green Awards received on Thursday: “Please advise whether you will require a prepaid parking ticket – the ticket will be valid for 4 hours – longer is for your account.” Or is this a sop to the drink drive lobby?
Of course Tim and Christian are entitled to their own opinions (even if informed sources confirm that Christian is the superior taster in a blind environment) but when both gentlemen individually taste different wines for the same guide and emote separately, it’s contradiction city, folks! Oh for the days when John Platter would taste all entries – at least there was consistency. Meanwhile, where the heck are those 2011 five star stunners so we may stuff our Christmas Stockings? asks the man in the bottle store.
If panels are not an option to create a single voice, rather than let pundits cherry pick producers they wish to taste sighted, Platter publisher Andrew McDowall should seriously consider tasting by cultivar. Assign Christian to Sauvignon Blanc by all means and let Tim deal with Fernão Pires. Michael Fridjhon as Paladin of Pinotage and Angela Lloyd as Matriarch of Muscadel certainly has legs.
Tasting room @ Bloemendal
A spirited and eloquent defense of the tasting status quo from the chairman of the various tasting panels at WINE magazine, Christian Eedes. Leaving aside outrageous claims that parts of the defense were lifted from the Wikipedia entry for Postmodernism – which would be a pretty postmodern thing to do in any event – Christian’s list of senior tasters speaks volumes for the status quo ante: Carrie Adams, Michael Fridjhon, Colin Frith, Tim James, Angela Lloyd, Allan Mullins and Christine Rudman. It’s the cast of an Agatha Christie whodunnit. My own establishment tasters would include South Africa’s most prolix foreign judge Dave Hughes and Duimpie Bayley, who chairs the panel for the Absa Top Ten Pinotage Competition. A competition reckoned to be to the most believable by Charles Back, the country’s most believable wine marketer.
Our blind tasting of Two Oceans yesterday included another omitted figure of towering reputation, Tinus van Niekerk, who wrote the textbook of wine appreciation back in 1981. We were joined by cosmopolitan blogger Clare Mack who brought a fresh Irish irreverence to the process, an exposure to popular wine styles in Europe and some excellent jokes. For while SA winemakers may be accused of suffering from “cellar palate”, local wine judges may likewise be accused of defending this palate in tasting tourneys, both blind and sighted (gasp!). Certainly Tinus and I were on the same wavelength, with our likes and dislikes in synchronized step, while Clare offered a refreshingly honest appraisal.
Carlen Groenewald and Clare Mack
Current tremors shaking the Bottelary Hills and parts of Durbanville induced by potential mining activities will rate a Haiti Hi-7 on the Richter scale compared to a Chilean Catastrophic 8.8 when the government’s campaign against foreign land ownership hits its stride. As minister of Land Affairs, Gugile Nkwinti, told parliament this week “Foreigners are buying land three times more than the government in the country… at some point we will end up not having land as a country. So we will look at the quantities and at some point we will make this information available.”
Gugile Nkwinti
The credibility gap between government and the wine industry as measured by anorak outrage at recent plans by an organ of the state to prospect for minerals on several wine farms in the Stellenboschkloof, Bottelary Hills and Durbanville would now defeat even Evel Knievel on his fastest canyon jumping motorcycle. Like the Chile Tsunami, the debate has now reached the lunatic fringes with Angela Lloyd reporting it the start of a Zimbabwe-style land grab and quoting unnamed geologists in yesterday’s Sindy “there is very little likelihood of finding valuable mineral deposits in this area.” I couldn’t find the story in my Sindy online but Angela’s Geos are obviously mistaken as Herman Charles Bosman’s dad used to mine tin on Zevenwacht and Jacques Viljoen makes a Tin Mine wine in its honour. My men with small pointy hammers claim the real reason for the application is to mine lithium for members of the ANC Youth League with ADHD.
Lacking ancient churches with crusader tombstones to rub and stained glass windows to ogle, the new wine appellations of SA are building cellars in an impressive secular religious style. Like Almenkerk in Elgin, an überbling temple to Bacchus. Joris van Almenkerk is a Belgian lawyer, bright as a pin, turned winemaker whose St. Paul moment came working a harvest in Rawsonville “where no one speaks any English at all. I realized I could not go back to my cubicle in Brussels so I enrolled in the winemaking course at the University of Stellenbosch.” And bought 100ha of Elgin apple and pear orchards 14 Km from the sea.
“We pulled up 32 ha of apples and pears (too much as we’re now replanting some) and planted 15 ha of vines.” As part of his studies, Joris visited 68 cellars around SA, stealing design with his eyes. “Morgenster was the most successful one” he remarks and his stainless steel tanks laid out either side of a large central aisle pay small scale homage to Giulio Bertrand’s Somerset West winery. Although the fireman’s pole which connects his first floor office to the main body of the cellar is his own invention.
Joris van Almenkerk
Reading the first 2010 blog posting from Angela Lloyd, most senior taster on the Platter sighted wine guide, I was depressed by her opening comment “there are few things about South African wine more frustrating than to see the annual multitude of new producers deliver nothing more than mediocrity.”
After singling out a couple of newbies destined to trip the light fantastic, she continues “but when one considers that these handfuls account for no more than one eighth (at best) of the newcomers, who usual total between 40 and 50, that leaves a lot of mediocrity. I’m not implying the wines are poor (though some are), but there is little or nothing to set them apart from the mass of South Africa’s six thousand odd wines, nor from many others in the wine world.”
Angela and Cape Wine Master Allan Mullins
The last PR release before Christmas was a “newsflash” from Paul Cluver. “Jonathan Ray of Telegraph.co.uk reflects on innovations in the wine industry in the past 10 years in his column dated 9 December 2009. Commenting on the improvement of new world countries Argentina, Chile and South Africa, he describes Paul Cluver Wines amongst others as ‘toothsome’ in contrast to the ‘ubiquitous’ Arniston Bay and Kumala.
Responding from Europe, Paul Cluver says ‘We are proud to be among the list of wineries mentioned. It is a clear indication that in England Paul Cluver Wines is regarded as one of the leading growers from South Africa.’” The weather in Europe is so bad, I almost didn’t recognize Paul in the photo below.
Paul Cluver in Europe
Alan Pick, of Butcher’s Shop & Grill fame in Sandton, is no Boomtown Rat. But if Garth Almazan’s Meat-Free Mondays wheeze takes off, Alan will be first in the queue booming out “I don’t like Mondays…” In an attempt to do his bit to reduce CO2 emissions, Garth offers a meat-free menu on Mondays as farting cows, poeping pigs, flatulent fowls and gassy geese produce 18% of the planet’s CO2 – in fact even more than the transportation sector – and cubic kilometers of barnyard aromas. Of course if Garth was as Irish as Sir Bob Geldof, then Meat-Free Mondays would probably be run on Fridays.
Meat-Free Garth Almazan
