Posts Tagged ‘Decanter’

Rockspider meets the Rooinek

I came across this quirky piece on Decanter.com

Alex Milner and Stefan Gerber, who met while studying wine making in Stellenbosch,  have teamed up to create a series of wines  labelled Boer & Brit which recognise their great-great grandfathers, each of whom fought on opposing sides during the Boer War 1880 – 1902.

Boer and Brit

Stefan is the great-great grandson of Paul Kruger, the Afrikaner leader and then president of the Transvaal.  The bitter war resulted in the British Imperial Army defeating the Boers and gaining control of the gold and diamond fields of South Africa. Leading a cavalry charge to end the siege of Kimberley, was Field Marshall John Denton Pinkstone French, 1st Earl of Ypres, the great-great grandfather of Alex.

The range of wines consists of a Sauvignon Blanc called Gezina after Stefan’s grandmother;  The General which is a blend of Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot and The Field Marshall, a blend of Shiraz, Mouvedre, Tinta Amarela and Carignan. Ironic back label phrases state: “The war is over – let’s party” and “With the body of a boer and the nose of an Englishman – you can’t go wrong”.

Bob's Your Uncle

Bob's Your Uncle

Another of this funky duo’s irreverant wines is a Bordeaux blend of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon called Bob’s Your Uncle which is bottled in a brown, beer bottle complete with a crown cork.

 

For a list of suppliers follow this link

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Pour bubbly like beer say the French

And who should know better? Reported in Decanter latest news is this article.

Champagne

Champagne

French scientists have discovered the secret to keeping the fizz in a glass of Champagne: pour it like a beer.

A new study reports the best way to pour Champagne is in a ‘beer-like way’ with the glass held at an angle.

It reveals the sparkling wine remains bubbly longer when poured in this way rather than pouring straight into the glass and waiting for the mousse to settle before topping up.

However, Tom Stevenson, chairman of the Decanter World Wine Awards’ Champagne panel, said: ‘Pouring Champagne like a lager is a seen as a really naff way to serve it. You would not see a sommelier doing it in a million years.’

‘Pouring it like the sommeliers do, does you a favour by letting the free CO2 escape from the glass so the bubbles don’t get up your nose,’ he added.

The research also discovered that Champagne served at lower temperatures retains its fizz. At higher temperatures, carbon dioxide is lost more quickly.

‘The beer-like way of serving champagne has much less of impact on its dissolved CO2 concentration than the champagne-like way of serving, especially at low champagne temperatures (4 and 12 °C). The beer-like way of serving champagne is much softer than the champagne-like one,’ the study said.

The report published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry was led by Gerard Liger-Belair, a professor at the University of Reims and author of Uncorked: the Science of Champagne.

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Sadly Vergelegen suffers bush fire damage

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According to Decanter.com, Vergelegen, voted Best South African Winery for 5 years running by Wine magazine readers, has suffered at least 1 million pounds of damage from bush fires which ravaged the estate’s property in February and March, destroying 11ha of its 150 ha of vines. These included a parcel of virus-free quality clones developed to improve vine material in South Africa.

Winemaker, Andre van Rensburg, called the loss of this vine improvement scheme a “borderline disaster. We have been selected to develop virus-free vines to supply cuttings to the industry and this will set the programme back at least six years. Clones of that quality are not readily available in South Africa.” Van Rensburg also discarded one-quarter of the 2009 red crop as a precaution against smoke taint. Volumes will be reduced by as much as 4,000 cases.

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