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Jonathan Davies is a chef and restaurant consultant from the Crown Hotel Group (The Crown at Whitebrook, best restaurant in Wales last year, is one of theirs) who will be opening the new fine dining restaurant on De Grendel wine estate in Durbanville in March. Jono declared war on Cape Town restaurant prices this afternoon noting that “R80 for a Spur burger is mad. Cape Town restaurant prices are so crazy, many of my friends are self-catering and eating at home.”
Overberg and Somerset West wine producers have to pick up the pieces from a PR fiasco today after the last day of the three day Wines2Whales mountain bike race from Lourensford to Onrus was cancelled due to inclement weather on Sunday. As one participant from the UK put it “conditions on Sunday are what we have to deal with every day. It cost us a fortune to fly out here and then to have the race cut short leaves us feeling bitterly disappointed.”
As does the R1300 taxi fare from the Arabella on Bot River lagoon to La Colombe for a commiseration lunch. At least he didn’t fall for the taxi driver’s offer of waiting for three hours and carrying on to the airport for the special price of R2,500.00. R400 for Excite was a far better deal and confirms that SA wine tourism still has a lot to learn. But what a lunch – fabulous foie gras and Alaskan crab to die for, washed down by a bottle of Beaumont Hope Marguerite Chenin Blanc 2010 for R90 in a restaurant that will surely top the Eat Out list if there is any justice left in SA.
2011 is shaping up as the most difficult vintage since spaceships landed in Châteauneuf-du-Pape (or Château Piff du Paff as that wonderful story in the Weekend Financial Times called it) and squashed the vines back in 1954. Things got so bad, the town council passed a bylaw forbidding aliens from landing in the vineyards on pain of having their flying saucers impounded. Aliens are not a problem in Constantia since the “Tree Taliban” started clearing invader species from Tokai forest and the slopes of Table Mountain. Rather it is a question of price.
In the Swartland, grape prices paid by the co-op are down 5% to around R2000/ton for sparse fruit from ancient bush vines. In leafy Constantia, famous for grassy Sauvignon Blanc, prime vineyards may demand up to R8000 ton for their berries. But the real money to be made is hawking hanepoot. R35 for a 2.5 Kg box translates to R14 000 a ton and sales average between 150 and 200 boxes a day with 300 boxes the record.
Constantia Uitsig viticulturalist and winemaker André Rousseau takes the grapes left on the vine after the hawkers have cut their bunches and makes a sweet Muscat wine that tastes and even looks like those pink blocks of Turkish Delight dusted with castor sugar.
André Rousseau
In a review of Simon Hoggart’s Life’s too short to drink bad wine: 100 wines for discerning drinkers, the blogger By George (WINE, FOOD, CRICKET, ART AND OTHER UNIMPORTANT THINGS) makes the point “I have always believed that it is better to read somebody who knows a bit about wine and can write well than somebody who knows a lot about wine and cannot write. There are too many of the latter” as the Grape communal blog confirms on a bi-monthly basis when the site is updated.
Call me a dizzy (natural) blonde but when I read the press release that Andrea Freeborough had won the Landbouweekblad SA Woman Winemaker of the Year Competition yesterday for “her” Fleur du Cap NLH 2009, I was slightly confused as I thought Pieter Badenhorst had made it. As must a couple of the judges, “Cathy Marston, wine writer from the UK and Cathy van Zyl, a British master of wine, and wine judge” who were at the same slap-up lunch at the Coopmanhuijs in Stellenbosch in the middle of May to launch the wine. Heck, the gorgeous, pouting PR who e-mailed the bombshell, Nicolette Waterford, was at the same bash where cosmopolitan blogger Clare Mack dinged her dong about La Colombe. If I’m confused, goodness knows what bashful brunette Greg Landman is going through.
Greg searches high and low for the Woman Winemaker of the Year
The Devil gets all the best lines. Take Brian Berkman’s heavyweight review of La Colombe yesterday “I can’t agree that La Colombe should be ranked as the 12th Best Restaurant in the World… I don’t accept that a restaurant with no major artwork investment or interior decoration and outhouse toilets with overflowing bins and exposed electrical boards can be so ranked. It is naïve to consider only the food when so many other factors also contribute to a standout experience.”
The Guide Michelin presumably takes such situational variables into account when awarding stars. Which brings us to the unfortunate tasting note of Cathy van Zyl on Aaldering wines: “Fons Aaldering launched the maiden 2007 vintage under a beautifully simple logo in the Netherlands around February this year, three months before tackling the South African market. During that short period, he secured more than 100 restaurant listings, 12 of which have one, or two, or even three in the case of Librije [sic], Michelin stars.” So while Michelin starred establishments smile on Fons, will Platter stars twinkle?
Fons at La Colombe
It’s been 30 months since I last saw Samantha and judging by appearances, growing wine outside Greyton has been good to her. Now flying solo, her 2008 Viognier is the finest SA example I’ve tasted.
It’s a wine to determine which side of the generational divide you’re on: the Young Turks at Under the Influence and La Colombe restaurant love it. Old Farts in green tracksuits with saggy bottoms on the panels of WINE magazine are less convinced, but to take the test, all you need do is buy a bottle or lunch at La Colombe.
Samantha yesterday
Bessie Smith was onto something when she sang “I want a pig foot and a bottle of beer” in the Wesley Wilson classic of the same name. Although one of the greatest mysteries of the Blues is why Nina Simone (herself no prude) left out the verse “Gimme a reefer and a gang o’ gin/ Slay me, ’cause I’m in my sin/ Slay me ’cause I’m full of gin” in her own benchmark recording of the song.
My thoughts turned to the Blues at lunch today at La Colombe in Constantia for the launch of three reds from Aaldering Vineyards and Wines: a seamlessly elegant Shiraz, a herbal Bordeaux blend (equal parts Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot) and a pyrotechical Pinotage, all from the standout (with standout translated into Afrikaans as “Viagra” for Sarie wine editor Riette Rust) 2007 vintage. Owner Fons Aaldering wore an orange tie especially for the occasion (below).
The bar has suddenly been raised for next Thursday’s lunch at La Colombe in the Constantia Winelands to launch the wine portfolio of Fons and Marianne Aaldering with the news that The Dove has shot up 26 places in the annual San Pellegrino list of Top 50 eateries. The Aalderings, hot favourites to grab poll position in the annual Platter sighted wine guide, nudging ahead of Aan de Doorns by an “m”, clearly know their foie gras from their goose liver.
Luke Dale-Roberts and Jörg and Claire Pfützner
As the conversation flurried around the circular lunch table at La Colombe yesterday like the low flying clouds rushing around outside in confusion as yet another cold front hit the Cape peninsula (Duncan Savage has already lost half the potential fruit from his Cape Point Isliedh vineyard), conversation turned to wood. And new French oak, in particular. Saronsberg winemaker Dewaldt Heyns confirmed (with a Malmesbury bray) that the wooding regime on the five vintages of his Shiraz/Mourvèdre/Viognier blend Full Circle being tasted, was the same – yet the current release (the 2007) is all coffee and mocha (“hello Diemersfontein!”, as he joked) at the moment. Descriptors lacking from the tight and elegant 2006, which was the best wine of the lunch. “Give it some time and that dominance of wood fades” was his advice.
Dewaldt Heyns, Sage of Saronsberg
