Franschhoek, South Africa’s food and wine center will host the largest local Cap Classique and Champagne Festival, boasting an impressive array of celebrated Cap Classique producers while simultaneously showcasing some of the finest French champagne houses.
Champagne
Franschhoek’s best restaurants will also be opening their doors to visitors and compiling special menus to complement the bubbly.
Tags: champagne, method cap classique
Ideally placed to pick up the tourist traffic at the Noordhoek start of Chapman’s Peak drive, the tasting room is situated in a building formerly part of the Kaolin mining operation which has long been closed and a complete rehabilitation of the land completed.
Cape Point Vineyards tasting room
Not only is this the showplace for Duncan Savage’s consistently acclaimed wines but also for a small part of the farm owner, Sybrand van der Spuy’s impressive art collection. A huge, teak cabinet rich with engravings, inlays and fine wood working which was commissioned by Paul Kruger president of the Transvaal, dominates the elegant room. Also impressive is a 300 year old tapestry depicting Bacchus which fills another wall and which necessitated light filtering features and temperature control to be incorporated into the tasting room design.
Cape Point Vineyards tastings consist of four different tasting packages starting with a two wine, Stonehaven Sauvignon Blanc 2009 and Scarborough Red 2007 option and extending to the tasting of the entire range of 7 wines. Also on offer is a generous cheese platter with enough cheese to even take home.
Wine tasting at Cape Point Vineyards
Jennifer the hostess was charming and attentive from the moment we stepped in and gave us the option of having our tasting on the ample couches and chairs inside or on the adjoining patio where the mountain peaks surround and the fynbos wild plants are in full flower. Knowledgeable and relaxed she talked us through 5 impressive white wines including the Isliedh, named after Sybrand van der Spuy’s first granddaughter, a full bodied, creamy mouth-filling, apricot, lime, Bordeaux-style blend of sauvignon blanc and semillon.
Antique teak cabinet with intricate inlays and carvings
In the end though, it was the Chardonnay 2007, which enthralled and found it’s way into the boot of our car together with the Scarborough Red, a favourite every-day drink for us.
Tags: Cape Point Vineyards
Whats what? No, I don’t mean “Hows it going”, I mean what is What?
Ok I’ll tell you – What? is a Woolworths varietal wine brand and we tried the sauvignon blanc. The label on the back of the bottle clears up some of the mystery by informing us that this sauvignon blanc is in fact a wine produced by Bergsig Estate.
What? sauvignon blanc
We paired it with pan-fried angel fish and a splash of lemon with baby potatoes and steamed vegetables on the side. Couldn’t imagine another matching wine for the menu with it’s crispy, grass and gooseberry notes on the nose and juicy pineapple, green pepper and lime on the palate.
Pretty typical, we think of a well crafted sauvignon blanc.
Tags: Bergsig, sauvignon blanc
Napa Valley Cleavage Creek wines
Cleavage Creek range of wines are fighting breast cancer one wine bottle at a time.
77 Year old Budge Brown, owner of vineyards and a winery in Napa Valley, California, sadly lost his wife of 48 years to breast cancer, resulting in him dealing with his overwhelming grief and anger by using his wine bottles to create awareness of the disease and also to pay tribute to some beautiful women survivors of breast cancer by displaying their images on the wine bottle labels. 10 % Of gross sales is donated to funding breast cancer research.
And more locally …..
Creative, entrepeneurial, Fairview Wine Farm owner, Charles Back decided 10 years ago to create a Rhone-style blend of shiraz, cinsault, carignan and mourvedre with fruit sourced from various vineyards around Paarl and Malmesbury and give it the tongue-in-cheek name of Goats Do Roam as a play on the French appellation title.
Soon following was Bored Doe, a classic Bordeaux blend led by cabernet sauvignon with merlot in the blend.
Despite the flippant brand name, the wines (9 of them currently) are critically applauded.
Bored Doe
Apart from being a wine producer of diverse, well-priced, enjoyable and accessible wines and brandy, Backsberg Wine Estate, Paarl, is a leader in environmental care, being the first wine producer in South Africa and one of only three in the world to gain Carbon Neutral Status by sequestrating it’s carbon emissions.
Not only that, Backsberg is moving towards bottling in light weight bottles which also reduces CO2 emissions because of being made from a higher percentage of recycled material which is kinder to the earths atmosphere. Ten percent of Backsberg land is set aside for the preservation of the endangered Fynbos plant family as their contribution to the Bio-Diversity and Wine Initiative.
350 Wine Bottles formation
Most recently, in collaboration with the Food and Trees for Africa organisation (FTFA), Backsberg has established an Earth Center which will be used as the base for FTFA in the Western Cape, and information hub, workshop venue and learning center.
FTFA , founded in 1990 is South Africa’s leading greening enterprise, which develops, manages and promotes greening, climate change action, sustainable natural resource management and food security programs, with the goat to alleviate poverty, improve environments, share knowledge and develop skills.
The image depicts a display of 350 wine bottles which number denotes the critical level of CO2 ppm in the atmosphere.
Tags: Backsberg Estate, FTFA
Gary Vaynerchuk, host of US Wine Library TV, called wine producers at a Wine Future conference in Rioja, “lazy” for leaving their retailers to talk to the customer base rather than doing it themselves. He also slammed them for ignoring the chance which Twitter and Facebook provide for wine producers to be in direct communication with their clients.
Wine Guy, Gary Vaynerchuk
I don’t give a crap about Facebook and Twitter but I care about consumers. You should be embarrassed if you don’t recognise that this platform allows you to talk to them.
People think that Wine Library TV was successful and crazy and have toys on my table, but plenty of people don’t like it. I’m not the most educated but I am passionate and I care. What is missing is customer service and caring.
Well spoken!
Tags: Gary Vaynerchuk, wine library tv
Delheim, one of the original farms on the Stellenbosch Wine Route produces this excellent value, under R50.00 wine for every day imbibing. Swirl the glass for hints of spice and smoke underlying that characteristic Cabernet nose. There is a strikingly velvet smoothness with barely noticeable tannins – all components of this wine are in harmony. It’s elegant, medium-bodied and mouth-filling with a satisfying, lingering aftertaste with soft spice.
Delheim Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz 2007
Tags: Delheim
Coming away from an evening of amazing wines and good food at the Stellenbosch Wine Show 2009 some months ago, my partner and I were unanimous in our agreement that the winery of the day for us, was Rust en Vrede Estate of the “Golden Triangle” area of Stellenbosch, and that there was almost a tie between the Estate Wine 2005, (a blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and shiraz) and the Cabernet Sauvignon 2006, but that the Cabernet Sauvignon came out tops. So impressed with it we were that I stashed away a bottle to celebrate the birthday of my significant other.
Thomas Jefferson, US President quotation
Rust en Vrede Cabernet Sauvignon 2006
Imagine my delight on hearing that Coenie Snyman, winemaker at Rust en Vrede since 2007, has just been named the 29th Diners Club Winemaker of the Year in this, the oldest and most prestigious wine competition in South Africa. It’s no surprise that the category this year is Cabernet Sauvignon and that Coenie’s winning wine is the 2007 vintage. After graduating from the University of Stellenbosch in 1994 with a degree in oenology and viticulture, Coenie gained practical experience at Cordoba, Stellenbosch as well as at Chalk Hill in Sanoma, California. He has also worked as cellar master at Distell in the Fleur Du Cap division. His core beliefs are that good grapes and wine are truly gifts from nature and he embraces the opportunity to work with the best grapes that nature and the human influence can produce.
Coenie Snyman, winemaker at Rust en Vrede
Which wine farm is this? Another clue is that their chardonnay won a Decanter World Wine Awards 2008 trophy.
The mystery wine farm
Add your winning answer to the comments field for a bottle of Buitenverwachting Meifort delivered anywhere in South Africa.
Good luck!
Imaginative and fun, these brands manage to make a strong statement.
Thierry and Guy’s Fat Bastard shiraz is from this French and English wine partnership.
Thierry and Guy's Fat Bastard shiraz
And a local favourite of mine, What? varietal wines from Woolworths, which are well priced, characteristic wines from some of the classic cultivars.
What? sauvignon blanc
Buitenverwachting Meifort 2006, a blend of malbec, petit verdot, cabernet franc and merlot, impresses with a myriad of bold, ripe fruit hues and earthy tones while the palate lives up to that expectation by giving mouth filling, satisfying, mulberry flavours with a hint of pepper. The finish stays and stays. Phenomenal value at only R49.95 from Pick and Pay and R55.00 from the farm.
Buitenverwachting Meifort 2006
