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Off to Muratie at lunchtime to plant trees in honour of octogenarian Spatz Sperling, of Delheim fame. As a warm up, Kim and Rijk Melck (pictured below, together with Hans-Peter Schröder from Oude Nektar) treated the tree huggers to oysters from Sue Baker and a glass of Muratie MCC 1763. A blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay (60:40), the bubbly has a yeasty nose and rich red berries on the palate – a convincing argument for a New World alternative to Champagne, fruit forward but with finesse retained.
Kim, Rijk and Hans-Peter
The Good Value Guru is sad. After three decades of bi-annual visits to the Helderberg Co-op, the establishment is leaving the sheltered cove of the Company of Wine People, itself formed by a merger of Stellenbosch Co-ops, to become part of Boekenhoutskloof, the Franschhoek grape Godzilla that is chomping up winemaking resources faster than Julius Malema downs Nando’s chicken. Out go the winemaker, tasting room manager (after 17 years service), nine cellar hands and even the cleaning lady.
Dark clouds gather over the Helderberg
Caroline Snyman is Madame Brandy at Distell. I sat next to her at a memorable World Cup dinner at the all-singing, all-dancing restaurant on Rust en Vrede.
Caroline Snyman
How true it is that no good deed goes unpunished! Hot on the heels of SA wine embracing the braai as the quintessential cuisine of the Winelands in the shape of the hot new WOSA publication Cape Wine Braai Masters, comes the news that Cape vineyards are being stolen for braai wood. L’Avenir in Stellenbosch has reportedly lost 2ha of vines, which are sold along the R44 to Paarl. Old bush vines make the best braai wood and the best wine, setting up an interesting dynamic between the interests of wine lovers and braai masters.
Hollywood has the Coen Brothers for entertainment while Stellenbosch has the Slabberts. Stellenbosch Hills cellarmaster PG is the funniest stand-up comedian since Tolla van der Merwe while winemaker Juan has the sleepy bedroom eyes of a young Warren Beatty. Together the pair are the ultimate 1-2 knockout combination for sighted wine guides. Which made the absence of every single pointy-headed Platter pundit at the launch of two Stellenbosch Hills super-premium wines at 96 Winery Road yesterday, a missed opportunity indeed.
Stellenbosch Slabberts
The wine exhibition scene in Johannesburg has been seriously shaken up by the news that the Stellenbosch Wine Route is to return to Johannesburg after an absence of many years. Well to Hyde Park actually and the Las Vegas-style mansion of the late Marino Chiavelli, according to Christa Naudé of American Express Stellenbosch Wine Routes.
Christa Naudé
While wine marketers big-note themselves and tweet each other pats on the back, how well did SA wine do in the recent World Cup? Not as well as they should have, if you ask an hotelier. Like Danny Bryer, Protea Hotels’ director of revenue management, sales and marketing, who told Business Day that while “Protea’s Johannesburg properties did exceptionally well, those in Stellenbosch and the Garden Route were trading lower than last year. ‘Not only did they not get support from the World Cup but there was hardly any leisure or business travel taking place during the period.’ While Cape Town did not do as well as expected, it was trading at far higher levels than a year earlier, Mr Bryer said. ‘I think some of us had too high expectations for Cape Town,’ he said.”
Blatter dropped the bottle for SA wine
The prize for the most inaccurate story on SA wine this week goes to the Buenos Aires Herald for the following offering which appeared on Sunday. Let’s hope this feature is not a general reflection of the level of information supplied to visiting journos.
If 32 countries will be vying for the soccer World Cup in South Africa as from next month [the World Cup kicks off on Friday], almost as many nations have become serious wine producers in an increasingly competitive and globalized industry once dominated by a couple of European majors — and South Africa is one of them, alongside Argentina.
Coffee conversation at Bar Bar Black Sheep this afternoon was briefly suspended as a patron interrupted BBBS partner Anton Espost to congratulate him on the restaurant wine list. “This is the best book I’ve ever read,” enthused die dame in terrifying black, “the descriptions are terrific.” From comparing Adi Badenhorst’s whites to the enthusiasm Elvis had for sleeping pills to describing Eben Sadie as “the baby Jesus of SA wine,” Anton admits to searching for an appropriate image rather than a string of adjectives “although my Eben theme may have been a bit much after I found out his wife’s name is Maria.”
One of Anton's
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