Posted in Wine on 01. Mar, 2011
Saturday saw the Constantia Fresh wine festival held at Buitenverwachting from 3pm till late, with many nursing a solid hangover Sunday. My hangover was enormous, but not from the festival. I caught just the first hour, then dashed off to a wedding, but in my hour I was thoroughly impressed. When the first song of the day is the thumping beat of New Zealand reggae band Fat Freddy’s Drop, you know you’re at no ordinary wine festival.
I tasted some cracker wines, the Koru Sauvignon Blanc 2007 a standout (incidentally also a New Zealander), the Klein Constantia SB 2005 and Tierhoek SB 2009 also great. Both Husseysvlei Sauv Blanc’s from Buitenverwachting were outstanding, as was their standard but exquisite Buitenverwachting Sauv Blanc 2010. Winemaker Adam Mason and viticulturist Stiaan Louw (pictured above, Stiaan clutching the weissbeer) held the fort at the Klein Constantia table and were also tapping out some 2011 mid-fermentation SB from a water cooler, while next to them, Steenberg offered a Sauvignon Blanc Reserve 2000 that had certainly past its prime but was still enjoyable. I loved the fact that most estates had an under-the-table bottle, sneaky Chardonnay or something different to add to their Sauvignon Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc blends on offer.
Spirited wino & writer Harry Haddon was the MC and kicked things off on a light-hearted note, announcing on the microphone that he’d be “tickling our earballs” over the course of the afternoon, another sign this was no ordinary wine fest. Constantia Fresh also ran a Twitter competition during the festival, had an &UNION beer stand (at a wine fest, brilliant!), served coffee from Truth. Coffee, hosted live music and apparently there was a burlesque show later. Or something like that. Either way, the generic oversized and overcrowded Cape wine industry events need to take some cues from this one.
Tasting 40 Sauvignon Blancs might also leave your teeth feeling like someone cleared the enamel off with a paint stripper, but thankfully they had some great food on hand. Those pork rillette cakes with anchovy mayo that Bertus Basson dished out… oh, boy… let’s just say it was really hard to leave at 4pm… but I look forward to next year, and being there till the end.
The Constantia Fresh Festival kicks off on Friday. Why do you care? Some fair and completely unbiased reasons…
Number One: Well, because this Saturday sees the main gathering on the lawns of Buitenverwachting that pairs all the (very good) wines* on show with food. And not just snacks from some hotdog joints, but cuisine of the haute kind by the respected chefs from The Greenhouse of Cellars-Hohenort, Overture, Constantia Uitsig, Grande Roche’s Bosman’s and Buitenverwachting. There’s also NOT TOO MANY wines on show, which is how many wine events balls it up. Not here. Go slow, take it easy and get indulgent, you’ll taste them all. 3pm – 8pm. Tickets: R400.
Number Two: Because on Friday afternoon they are hosting (and probably sold out, but if you’re lucky you might still get a spot) a tasting of the best local and international white blends available, with representation from estates like Château Laville Haut Brion, Château Haut Brion Blanc, Château Smith-Haut-Lafitte Blanc and more. If these fancy French names mean nothing to you, let me say that they’re all a) fucking expensive and b) expensive for a good reason and c) hard to get hold of.
Number Three: They, the good people at Fine Wine Events, are also hosting a Friday dinner at the Cellars-Hohenhort where Iron Chef Peter Temeplhoff will prepare a five course degustation** menu that is guaranteed to make your tongue feel like it’s never really lived before. Naturally, paired with local and international wines of note.
Number Four: the lads from &UNION will be pouring their beers at this wine gathering on Saturday. Ever been sipping wine non-stop at a wino event for five hours and just feel like a beer? Now you can. And GOOD BEER too.
Number Five: because the good people at Fine Wine Events are my friends, Jörg “That’s-not-a-wine-mate,-this-is” Pfützner and his partner Claire “I’m-too-busy-to-run-for-president” Lockey. Legends x 2.
Number Six: they linked to the cool Klein Constantia viral video on their homepage. What one? This one… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL0eneoGaVM.
Number Seven: what? You need seven reasons?!! Okay, in case you do need more encouragement on Number One, note that this gathering is held on Buitenverwachting’s lawns. Yes, you get to drink plenty of (good) wine*, have an excuse to wear a panama hat/summer dress and act completely uncouth amongst very cultured people, all of them so merrily drunk happy they act uncouth too.
Tickets for Saturday’s general gathering available from participating wine farms as well as &UNION on Bree Street. More details at www.constantiafresh.com. No, I don’t have tickets for you, I’m selfish like that, but I’m told you can win some via Cape Town Girl.
–
* wines from Constantia include Constantia Uitsig, Klein Constantia, Groot Constantia, Steenberg (these guys know how to throw a party), Eagle’s Nest, Buitenverwachting and Constantia Glen. And there are more South African wines there too. Yes, more!
** degustation – a fancy French word for the action or an instance of tasting especially in a series of small portions. — de·gust \di-ˈgəst, dē-\ transitive verb, etc…
A guide to a few cool food and drink events happening around Cape Town over the month of October…
Spring it on Constantia.
Constantia, which has billed itself as ‘Cape Town’s Vineyard,’ hosts a festival this month to celebrate their heritage of food and wine. Basically, what this means is a great excuse to put on your Panama hat and get elegantly wasted in beautiful surroundings, something we do all enjoy. From the 15th – 24th of this month, there’ll be wine dinners, tastings and other events hosted by each of the wine estates as well as other establishments. Things like tapas and jazz at Steenberg. Or if jazz, oysters, bubbly and some cricket action sound good, head to the ‘Celebrities against Winemakers’ cricket match at Constantia Uitsig on the 17th. There’s also a vertical tasting of Vin de Constance at Klein Constantia on the 15th & 20th. Though this wine was being made back in the 1800′s, I don’t think the vertical goes back to then, but it’s no doubt going to be a treat. Get the scoop at spring-it-on-constantia.com.
Meet the Maker.
As if their beer wasn’t enough of a reason to visit, &UNION also host these Meet the Maker events every so often. A way for them to show you how much thought goes into their choice of producers. A way for their producers to show you how much painstaking effort they put into everything they make. Book a spot at the upcoming evening on the 11th October where Johan Kruger (Sterhuis) talks wine, Mike Robb talks biltong, Richard Bosman talks charcuterie and Evan Faull (Knead) talks bread. Seating is limited, and you get well fed. For price & booking info, contact them via the world’s greatest email address: pigandbeer@andunion.com.
Cookshop + The Foodie.
And finally, I have plenty of love for the Cookshop cafe and deli, hence I’ve decided to be involved in their October dinner club. If you haven’t been to Cookshop then it means you probably haven’t tried their good coffee, awesome sandwiches and ridiculously tasty homemade pastries. They host a monthly dinner club where they serve a menu and wines to just 20 people. It’s hard to get a seat, but worth it. This month, it’s a four-course menu with some wines I’ve selected, all in for R285pp. The menu? West Coast Mussels in saffron & fennel broth (w Secateurs Chenin Blanc), Walnut Crusted Linefish on wilted spinach with caper berry sauce (w Paradyskloof Chardonnay), Oxtail Ravioli with rosemary-tomato sauce (w Merwida Barbera) and for dessert, Chocolate Parfait & Honeycomb with gooseberries (w Domaine de Canton liqueur). I’m sure there’ll be some grappa floating around afterwards to go with the espressos. Taxi!
I recently attended an evening of cocktails that somehow left me with an almost-full bottle of Noilly Prat dry vermouth. The stuff makes an excellent dirty martini (or filthy martini, depending how much olive brine you add), but then if I finished the entire bottle only making martinis, it’d be awesome I shudder to think of my condition. Instead, I thought it’d be fun to cook with it, since it has a lovely fragrant flavour. It actually makes a great alternative to white wine in many recipes, but worked superbly with this pork leg. Great for a lazy Sunday, especially since you now have a bottle of Noilly Prat in your possession and this means you’re going to make a good martini. Or several. What else are you going to do while that pork cooks? Follow the recipe closely to see how…
Ingredients
1 pork leg (deboned)
1 cup chicken stock
3/4 cup Noilly Prat dry vermouth
1 bag green olives
two handfuls baby potatoes
handful small radishes
1 can white beans
1 handful green beans
1 handful fresh thyme, picked
olive oil
salt & freshly ground pepper
Preparation
Set the oven to maximum temperature with the broiler element on. Then, while you’re waiting for that to heat up, mix yourself a dirty martini. You deserve one, just for trying a dish as great as this. Fill a shaker with ice, pour in two measures of vodka (Finlandia is a good one), 1/4 a measure of Noilly Prat and a 1/4 measure of olive brine. (If you want to go filthy, mash up two green olives and add this too.) Stir well and strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with three olives on a toothpick. Aah, civility.
Back to work. Rub the pork shoulder in olive oil, salt and pepper. Place pork in casserole dish under broiler, and brown on each side. Keep an eye on it, as you don’t want to blacken it – we’re not cooking Cajun here. Use kitchen tongs or a serving fork to rotate the shoulder in the dish, without removing from oven.
This should take about 15 minutes, by which time your martini will be finished. Feel free to mix another one. But first, remove dish from oven and turn the oven temperature to 150′C with the element off. Mix the chicken stock, Noilly Prat, thyme and half of the olives together. Splash in a bit of the olive brine too. Pour over the pork, and baste well. The pork should now be sitting in a ‘bath’ of marinade. Place dish in oven and let cook for 4 hours, turning every hour.
Add the baby potatoes, radishes, white beans, green beans and replace in oven. Cook another 2 hours. While its cooking these last few hours, you should have invited guests to join you in exploring how best to enjoy a martini. This is a most fun way to pass the time, and highly intellectual, of course. Churchill, Hemingway, Faulkner and others attested to this. You can experiment with the ratio of Noilly Prat to vodka. You can also see how dirty you like yours. Purists won’t add brine to their martini at all, but they don’t know what they’re missing. Besides, with the brine addition it makes it a lot easier to enjoy. But don’t forget the pork: remember to mix the vegetables in the marinade and turn the pork every so often in between exercising your inner James Bond.
Once the two hours are up, serve immediately, spooning the rich and tasty marinade (which has plenty of pork fat in it now) over the meat. You can continue to drink martinis with the meal, but you might find yourself so plastered you can’t taste the great food you’ve cooked, something of a tragedy. I’d rather recommend a good bottle of Riesling, something dry with good acidity and minerality. Paul Cluver makes a goodie, as does Klein Constantia.
To the fine-dining restaurants of Cape Town, behold the new kid on the block. Wait, that’s actually not entirely true, since the new kid is in a very old building. The Reserve Bank building on Wale Street, to be precise. But that new kid is Bombay Brasserie. Yes, yes, I hear you sigh, it’s in the Taj Hotel and hotel restaurants are boring and filled with shadowy foreigner types that flash their black AMEX cards* around, but this one is not like that. Bombay Brasserie has a freshness to it, while still providing a classic, fine-dining experience. And, Bombay Brasserie may just have the best service in Cape Town. Why? Well, while the restaurant world has moved more casual and carefree (not that I have a problem with that), Bombay has decided to go with Silver Service. I don’t know of another restaurant in Cape Town that does that. It is rather an awesome experience watching your tandoori prawns and chicken tikka get individually placed on your plate by a waiter dexterously using a spoon and a fork in one hand. Aside from this element, the overall response and demeanor of everyone on the floor was superb and unstuffy. They really, genuinely seemed to care.
The Taj group cleverly decided to send two of their best chefs from India to run the kitchen at Bombay. They make Indian food unlike any other restaurant in Cape Town. Kind of how I imagine it would be if Luke Dale-Roberts opened an Indian restaurant. The spices are more delicate and less hot than Bukhara or any other top Indian spot, and the dishes are not cumbersome. And they are unique! No butter chicken here. Try the lamb falafel, so finely minced it slowly sinks into your tongue. Or the corn soup, served firstly as bowl placed in front of you with nothing but a few pieces of popcorn in it. The soup is then poured over the popcorn from a ceramic pot. Full marks for presentation here. And it’s not just for show. The rich, buttery popcorn actually makes this dish! There was a lamb shank curry that was exquisitely flavoured, if a little too delicate. And for R260 on the menu it might be the most expensive curry in Cape Town. Probably South Africa. Actually, make that Africa. Fuck, who would have thought you’d get a more expensive Indian restaurant than Bukhara! But I guess a dish from Bukhara brought here would be like McEnroe bringing his wooden racquet to play against Federer: completely out of its league. What I’m saying is rather go for the intensely flavoured prawn curry, the best dish I had.
But what really made the meal were the food and wine combinations. They’re still working on it, but the aim is to offer several tasting flights made of three wines, so guests can match their favourite to what they’re eating and then order a glass or bottle. Food and wine pairing is often tricky: with larger tables you can have too much variation of foods on the table to make it really work. What Indian cuisine like this brings is a common flavour direction, i.e. one well-chosen wine will work extremely well with many dishes. It also means tasting several similar yet different wines and trying to match the best to each dish is great fun. Brilliant fun! And the wines they offer are unusual, yet perfectly suited. We first tasted the Paul Cluver Gewurztraminer 09, Cederberg Bukketraube 09 and Klein Constantia Riesling 08. The Riesling won hands down as the most versatile, but tasting and trying with all three was very interesting. It’s also a great way to encourage the boring Chardonnay and Sauv Blanc crew to try something else. We also drank the De Trafford Merlot 07 (overshadowed by the spices), Raats Cabernet Franc 07 (superb) and Vins d’Orrance Syrah 07 (very robust, but delicious), but the white wines stole the show.
Bombay Brasserie is very expensive, as mentioned. The atmosphere is also definitely fine-dining: quietly busy, with soft conversation and faint background (Indian) music. But the kitchen opens onto the restaurant (there is a chef’s table of sorts) and the sounds bring some good energy to the room, which has all the original bank wood paneling with some added blue tones and velvet textures. Service is exceptional and the food undoubtedly the best Indian I’ve eaten. This is not a place you’d eat at often. But when you do: whoaa, what a taste ride!
Bombay Brasserie.
* What? Yes, the black AMEX card is for you if you’re spending more than R1,875,000 on your credit card a year…
Who is the Foodie? It doesn’t really matter. Bacon is god. Wine cures anything. If you believe those two facts, then we’re going to get on fine. This means you have discovered the power of food to make life better. This knowledge is imperative to the art of living well.
