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Just one block from the fishing boats, on Harbour Road in Kalk Bay, is a big old corner house with millionaire views across False Bay.

This house has long been a landmark. For at least five years it was Theresa’s Restaurant, painted pink, with a mermaid facing the busy road. Café Soul took over for a few years, and JJ’s opened, with Shireen Ramdayal at the helm, a year ago.

Ramdayal is breathing new life into the corner. Her curry portions are huge, and priced low. She has business-smarts – offering family specials, Christmas buffets and private party specials – but I think it’s the lamb curry.

What a beautiful thing this is. Glossy and chocolate-coloured, the first thing you notice is the chunkiness: fresh curry leaves, whole spices, chunks of cinnamon, half potatoes and great wodges of lamb on the bone. It’s as oily, earthy and spicy as it should be – it tastes like what it is: a family recipe perfected by three generations of very good cooks – but the amount of meat, and the tenderness of it, is remarkable. I have no idea how Ramdayal affords to sell what is essentially a double portion of curry – and arguably a triple portion of meat – for under R100.

The chicken curry is just as good. These Durban-style meat curries are essentially big mouthfuls of meat and potato in a thinnish spicy gravy. They work very well with a roti in one hand, or in a half loaf, as a bunny chow. Even though the sign on the wall says “Indian Cuisine” JJs is not in the business of serving korma-type curries with neat strips of meat in a thick beige sauce. No. This is hearty, robust South African food. Ramdayal’s lime pickle is as chunky as her curries, with wedges of hot, sour lime in red-tinged oil.

I’m a fan of her moong dal. I’ve had it three times as a main course. It’s made with green legumes – specifically, Indian mung beans – as well as literal handfuls of fresh thyme, fresh mint and fresh coriander. I really like the mini carrot salad she serves with all her curries. It’s bright, fresh and tangy.

When a customer places an order at JJ’s, the smell of fresh garlic hits the air. Ramdayal’s curries are good not only because she’s generous – and because she uses and adapts her grandmother and grandmother’s recipes – but because she doesn’t skimp on fresh ingredients. A curry without freshness tastes musty. Using old spices from the cupboard, and dried herbs instead of fresh, produces an amateur-tasting curry. Ramdayal would no sooner use stale spices or sprouting garlic as she would serve you a three-day old roti.

Alongside Ramdayal’s kitchen and dining room, with its own door onto Harbour Road, is a well-stocked neighbourhood tuckshop. This is where children from the fishermens’ flats come to buy sweets and where the guys who sit on the corner buy single smokes. JJ’s is spitting distance from popular restaurants Harbour House and Live Bait in one direction, and Salt and The Olympia Café in the other, but JJ’s is not here for the flat-white-and-pastry crowd. JJ’s clientele generally consists of Kalk Bay residents who don’t live in “the village” – that cottagey, cobbledy bit that officially ends on the other side of Clairvaux Road.

Personally I don’t love Ramdayal’s breyanis – I find them too dense – and her butter chicken is so pale and creamy it reminded me of macaroni cheese. Her rice portions are regular-size and the rice itself is nothing special. Her roti is good but not brilliant. Children like her bunny chows, but they’re not for me.

My advice is simple: get the lamb curry. Get six and freeze them. Invite people over and serve it. Have it with buttered toast if you must – I have, when I ran out of rice – but don’t miss it. The JJ’s lamb curry (for two) is R98 well spent.

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To mark the launch of the 2017 vintage of the top-end Cape Bordeaux Red Blend from Constantia Glen, a 10-year vertical was proposed by winemaker Justin van Wyk. At my suggestion, we decided to 1) taste blind in random order so as to remove prejudice regarding the relative merits of any particular vintage; and 2) include a few vintages of Gourveneurs Reserve, the equivalent offering from nearby Groot Constantia, wines of the same vintage to be poured as a pair:

Here is the order of tasting with my ratings alongside (plus the original winemag.co.za rating where applicable):

Some general observations: Taken as a whole, the wines in the line-up seemed to have a coolness and perhaps even an austerity by virtue of being from Constantia that you don’t get from Stellenbosch.

It was initially difficult to discern the “house style” of either property (they are some two kilometres apart with the Constantia Glen vineyards around 100m higher than those of Groot Constantia) but upon discussion with Van Wyk and Boela Gerber, his counterpart from Groot Constantia, we agreed that the Constantia Glen wines tended to have relatively more opulence of fruit and those of Groot Constantia were more tannic.

Regarding the less successful wines, it was fascinating to note that there was always some kind of explanation as to why this was the case. The Constantia Glen 2009, which seemed relatively imprecise, was the only vintage to Petit Verdot driven, this variety making up 40% of the blend; the Groot Constantia 2010, which presented as relatively lean and tart, had an unusually large component of Cabernet Franc at 37%; the Constantia Glen 2014 was an unusually wet vintage…

In line with conventional wisdom, both sets of wines from the 2015 and 2017 vintages showed magnificently. Tasting notes and ratings for the two 2017s as follows:

Constantia Glen Five 2017
Price: R490
32% Cabernet Sauvignon, 24% Merlot, 17% Cabernet Franc, 17% Petit Verdot and 10% Malbec. Matured for 18 months in French oak, 75% new. The nose is currently rather shy with dark berries and a little reduction in evidence. The palate is powerful with dense fruit, fresh acidity and firm tannins – comes across as extremely youthful and should probably not be opened until at least 2022. Alcohol: 14.5%.

Groot Constantia Gouverneurs Reserve 2017
Price: R494
38% Cabernet Sauvignon, 32% Cabernet Franc, 24% Merlot 24% and 6% Petit Verdot. Matured for 15 months in French oak, 75% new. A perfumed top note before red and black berries. Relatively medium bodied with pure fruit, fresh acidity and fine tannins, the finish very long – particularly elegant. Alcohol: 13.88%.

If there is a South African wine ward with, pro rata, a more, and more varied, international presence than Paarl’s Voor Paardeberg, I don’t know it. Leaving the R45 and driving along the road skirting the gentle lower southern slopes of that sprawling granitic lump known as the Paardeberg, you first find Doran Vineyards, a partnership between the very local André Badenhorst and Irishman Edward Doran. (Nearby Taillard is being sold, so who knows there.) A little farther along is Vondeling, owned by a British partnership, with locally-based Julian Johnsen the prime mover; then, based at Sonop, the large Swiss-owned venture Jacques Germanier (though I have heard that Sonop has been sold to a local concern); next up is the historic Start van Paardeberg farm owned by the unmistakeably English James Reid, Operations Director at Accolade and partner of Chris Williams in The Foundry, which is now based there; and then we find Slent farm, home of Ayama Wines and of Michela and Attilio Dalpiaz, as Italian as their names.

That sounds very promising and interesting, surely – and the delivery is indeed impressive. The wines of the estates are overwhelmingly marketed under the ward name, itself something fairly rare in the Cape – the sad side of it is that it is no doubt prompted not only by proud self-assertion but also by a wish to avoid the larger, better known appellation, Paarl, whose image (as I discussed recently) is somewhat floundering. And that would be true also of many wines coming from other Voor Paardeberg grape-growers and sold to significant wineries elsewhere, from Ahrens via Momento to Radford Dale.

However, as Chris Williams of The Foundry suggested to me when I remarked on the general high quality of wines from Voor Paardeberg (his Grenache Blanc is one of the best known, even if many admirers haven’t noted its origin), there does seem to be also something distinctive about the ward’s wines, and this is something that will, hopefully, be increasingly brought out in years to come.

The quality was clear to me on my visit last week to two of the Voor Paardeberg estates, Vondeling and Ayama (my first time at the latter). In fact, time being limited, at both places I tasted only their grander wines, as well as touring the vineyards; both also have entry-level wines with good reputations.

Vondeling is probably best known for its to Babiana blend of chenin, viognier, grenache blanc and Roussanne – always very good, and capable of rising to genuine excellence, as it does in the exquisite 2019, to be released shortly, with even more finesse and delicacy than the 2018 (a fine bargain at R230 ex farm – much less for Wine Club members). Also available soon, the new single-vineyard Bowwood Chenin Blanc 2019 is a little less impressive – forward, grippy and notably chalky; it seems very young and will probably blossom. Rurale is a méthode ancestrale, bubbly – in fact the Cape’s first version of what is now a rather trendy style. The 2016 is appealing, with some leesy maturity and sweet appley flavours and a crispness fairly successfully struggling against the residual sugar sweetness. If you’re willing to stray from MCC, the rather rustic charm is undeniable (“every year is an adventure” says winemaker Matthew Copeland, perhaps revealingly).

The Vondeling reds are generally ripe, full-fruited & rich in style, this generosity balanced by a firm structure. The Bowwood Pinotage 2017 and the shiraz-based Monsonia 2016 have a little sweetness on the finish, but are very well structured. Cabernet does perhaps surprisingly well in the Voor Paardeberg. The Barrel Select version (2018, R160) has good cedary dryness and a clean freshness and firm tannic structure to control the richness, and the pricey (R855) Philosophie 2015 Bordeaux-style blend takes this form and depth to a higher, more intense and impressive level.

Vondeling is doing a lot of work in its vineyards, with a lot of pulling out and replanting (though a new grove of almond trees takes advantage of the comparatively plentiful supply of water on this side of the Paardeberg, one of the main differences from the Swartland-side kloofs). And extensive vineyard work is also very apparent at Ayama, where Attilio Dalpiaz is putting great and considered effort into retraining vines, to maintain quality while improving the yields of mature vines. It’s also worth noting that both of these substantial estates are also devoted to preserving the integrity of the chunks of mountain that they own, and the owners seem as proud of their unique flowering plants and captured film of playing leopard cubs as of their wines.

With Attilio amongst Ayama’s vines, in the cellar Michela rules (she had plenty of winemaking experience in her native Friuli). The great attraction here is the Vermentino – the white grape that they introduced to the Cape from Italy. Getting it through quarantine and into the ground was a long process, begun not long after Attilio and Michela bought the farm in 2004 (the story told on the informative Ayama website). But worth the effort, especially as the aromatic and flavour character of the wines offers something different from anything else grown here. First vintage was 2016 and I tasted the three subsequent vintages – the 2017 showing bottle development but still fresh and aromatic, the 2019 revealing a greater intensity, I thought, perhaps thanks to the maturing vines; all of them made to respond to different vintage conditions. Incidentally, the unusual label image derives directly from the pattern made in the foam created on top of the maturing vermentino must.

A red partner to the Vermentino since 2017 is the Carignan, also old-oaked – light-feeling and charmingly pretty, though ripe and not without power. Also notable are a subtly unfruity, fresh and bright Chenin Blanc, and a firm unoaked Pinotage which stylistically falls happily rather closer to the light, new-wave versions than more old-fashioned, extracted and sweetly powerful ones.

There’s clearly a real dynamism in Voor Paardeberg these days and it should be better known than it probably is. The leading producers are already addressing this, I believe and will be working together (including some from the Swartland side of the Paardeberg) to help develop the character and the reputation of the area, which undoubtedly has much to offer winelovers and wineland-tourists.

Tim James is one of South Africa’s leading wine commentators, contributing to various local and international wine publications. He is a taster (and associate editor) for Platter’s. His book Wines of South Africa – Tradition and Revolution appeared in 2013

Journey’s End in Somerset West was acquired by Roger Gabb, founder of Western Wines that came up with the successful Kumala brand in 1995 and is today run by his son, Rollo. Tasting notes for the top-end current releases that form the Precision Series as follows:

Journey’s End The Griffin Syrah 2016
Price: R280
Vinification involved carbonic maceration before maturation lasting 16 months, 20% new American oak, 20% new French oak and the rest older French oak. Red fruit, mint and other fresh herbs, vanilla and spice on the nose. The palate is rich and broad although not short of freshness, the tannins already resolved and hence quite soft – drink now.

Journey’s End Cape Doctor 2015
Price: R280
39% Cabernet Sauvignon, 33% Merlot, 17% Petit Verdot, 6% Cabernet Franc and 5% Malbec. Matured for 20 months in barrel, the Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in new oak and the rest in older oak. A complex nose of red and blackberries, a subtle herbal note, olive, oyster shell, earth and vanilla. The palate is deep and rich with lots of flavours but equally good freshness while the tannins are fine-grained. Well balanced, this is a classic example of a Cape Bordeaux Red Blend.

Journey’s End Destination Chardonnay 2019 (R280 a bottle) rated 90 points in the Prescient Chardonnay Report 2019 – see here.

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Bruce Jack has made a red blend under the Mary le Bow label going back some time and this is now joined by the Viognier 2019.

Consisting of 85% Viognier from a 2004 vineyard farmed by the Frater family outside Ashton plus 15% Chenin Blanc from a Stellenbosch vineyard in 1978, vinifcation involved fermentation and maturation lasting five months in barrel, mostly old French but also some American.

The nose shows pear, peach, citrus some waxy character, a little earthiness plus vanilla. The palate is marked by good fruit expression, bright acidity and a pithy finish. It’s not without weight and full of flavour – a pretty tidy example of a variety that’s too often rather blowsy. Price: R180 a bottle.

My investigation into claims that the exiled emperor drank wine from the Upper Olifants River Valley has bordered on obsession over the past month or two (see here, here, and here) and I need to walk away from it for now (not least because it seems Paarl could use a little TLC).

But I do want to wrap things up by focusing on the deep, narrow, fertile valley south of what is Citrusdal today: the farms around The Baths, reached most directly via the old Cartouw pass, and what we know about the wines produced there (in the past and today).

Further evidence has come to light about the Cartouw pass thanks to the journals of Hendrik Swellengrebel, son of a former Cape Governor, dean of Utrecht Cathedral, who made three journeys into the interior of the Cape of Good Hope in the late 1770s. He reached the Olifants River Valley at precisely 9.05am on 14 January 1777, having taken just over an hour to traverse the pass: ‘On the western side it is reasonably good, but on the eastern side it is very rocky and steep,’ he wrote. ‘It needed three-quarters of an hour, without stopping once, to get down.’

By 10.30am Swellengrebel had reached the farm of Schalk Willem Burger: presumably his freehold farm Halve Dorschlvloer (known as Karnemelksvlei today) rather than Misgunt, his loan farm. Either way, Swellengrebel described it as ‘one of the finest farms because of the water, the wild oak trees etc, and especially the fruit trees’.

‘We found lovely grapes here,’ recorded Swellengrebel, although he didn’t mention the local wine (unlike botanist Francis Masson who in 1773 found it ‘sour and unwholesome; which, I think, may be due to their planting their vines in wet, marshy places’). In a letter written in 1783, however, Swellengrebel discussed winegrowing at the Cape in general: ‘Wheat and wine are cultivated between Cape Town and Steenberg and, across False Bay, along the Hottentots Holland mountains and those of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein, to Roodezand [Tulbagh] and the mountains of the Olifants River, and thence along the Piketbergen to the sea.’

Opining that ‘the western districts are well suited for wines, yet the Overberg districts are not’ (famous last words?), he wrote: ‘I have drunk some white wine which could be taken for the best French wine, and I have been told of red wines with the same flavour and aroma as those of Bordeaux… Fustage, like other wooden articles, is extremely dear, and so is transport, for not more than one leaguer [about 575 litres] can be carried in a waggon.’

From that last observation, we can conclude that only small quantities of wine would have made it to the Cape from the Upper Olifants River, with Sir John Barrow lending weight to this argument in 1798: ‘The great distance from the Cape, and the bad roads of the Cardouw, hold out little encouragement for the farmer to extend the cultivation of grain, fruit, or wine, beyond the necessary supply of his own family.’

As I showed in my last column, however, local farmers routinely used the Piekenierskloof pass rather than the more direct but also more dangerous Cartouw pass for their larger loads and more cumbersome wagons. ‘It is not as difficult as the Cartow [sic] but longer,’ agreed Swellengrebel.

What’s more, the production capacity of some Upper Olifants River cellars definitely seems to have been larger than would have been needed for home consumption (11 leaguers inventoried in Schalk Willem Burger’s estate in 1782, for example; 13 leaguers inventoried in Barend Lubbe’s estate at Grootvalleij in 1785). Meanwhile, the estate inventory of Gerbregt Christina Pretorius in 1804 proves that Abraham Mouton of Modder Fontein was selling his wine because she still owed him for two half-aums (roughly 145 litres) as well as five bottles of brandy.

While investigating the Mouton/Brakfontein claim to Napoleon fame, I was contacted by a historian named Alex Giardini who grew up on a farm just south of Citrusdal and researched the history of the area for his Honours thesis. ‘I heard somewhere that wine from the farm Kardouw was sent to St Helena,’ he said. ‘I really cannot remember [who told me] to be honest.’

Kardouw (known as Cartouw in the old days) is right at the foot of the old disused pass and today forms part of ALG Estates along with a handful of other farms in the Van der Merwe family (including Karnemelksvlei). Having married into the family, Stellenbosch University viticulture and oenology graduate Grettchen van der Merwe has set about exploring the potential of Piekenierskloof grenache and cinsault, and she has named her range Kardouw Wines.

Was she perhaps able to unearth anything linking her in-laws’ farm to Napoleon? ‘No, but Kardouw was originally a wine farm,’ she confirms. ‘The original cellar is still on the premises – it’s pretty old.’

Interestingly, Cardouw was the name chosen in the late 1990s by the old Goue Vallei/Citrusdal Cellars co-operative for its top-end range, but all the material I can find merely attributes the choice of name to the pass (and the Khoisan word for ‘narrow passage’) rather than to a farm once known for its wine.

So there I’ve decided to leave it, for now, but I remain hopeful that someone will find some old records in a dusty cellar someday, and that we’ll be able to reach agreement upon this fable.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Masson, Francis: An Account of Three Journeys from the Cape Town into the Southern Parts of Africa, Philosophical Transactions for the Royal Society of London, vol.66 (1776), pp.268-317

Swellengrebel, Hendrik jr: Briefwisseling oor Kaapse sake 1778-1792 (ed GJ Schutte), Van Riebeeck Society, Cape Town, 1982

Swellengrebel, Hendrik jr: Journalen van Drie Reizen in 1776-1777, (ed GJ Schutte), Van Riebeeck Society, Cape Town, 2018

German-born Simon Obholzer met Celia Hoogenhout of a Wellington wine-growing family in 2008 and after getting married in 2012 took over the farming of Woestkloof on the slopes of the Groenberg. Louis Nel, previously of Warwick and Hidden Valley, makes the wine on their behalf. Tasting notes and ratings for the new releases as follows:

Casa Simelia Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon 2018
Price: R240
80% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon. Matured for 12 months in French oak, 10% new. Ripe berries, an attractive leafy note plus a hint of earthiness on the nose. The palate is juicy and fresh with soft tannins.

Casa Simelia Syrah 2018 (price: R240) rated Top 10 in the Prescient Shiraz Report – see here.

Simelia Fluvius Merlot Reserve 2016
Price: R690
From a vineyard planted in 1992. Matured for 36 months in French oak, 30% new. Red and black berries, a hint of mint plus chocolate and spice on the nose. The palate is pleasant enough but lacks some fruit depth, the finish very dry.

Simelia Senectus Syrah Reserve 2016
Price: R690
From a vineyard planted in 1980. Matured for 36 months in French oak, 20% new. Black fruit, earth and pepper on the nose while the palate shows massive fruit concentration offset by fresh acidity before a savoury finish.

Grapes from Henk Laing’s property on Citrusdal Mountain, this wine as made by Ginny Povall is worthy of purchasing every year but the 2019 is a particularly beautiful rendition. A beguiling nose of pear, peach, citrus, a hint of guava, fynbos and a slight leesy note. The palate is full but equally very well defined – impressive fruit density and bright acidity before a finish that’s long and dry. Utterly compelling. Tasted pre-release.

Southern Right was founded by Anthony Hamilton Russell of Hamilton in 1994 to explore the potential of Pinotage but today the volume of the Sauvignon Blanc under this label dwarfs that of its counterpart red – in 2019, there were 108 996 bottles of the Sauvingon produced compared to 13 824 bottles of the Pinotage.

The Sauvignon Blanc 2019 sells for R135 and is designed to have broad appeal without being facile. Grapes are sourced from across the greater Walker Bay area and vinification involves 4% barrel maturation for a bit of extra richness and breadth. Nothing too overt on the nose – subtle notes of citrus, white peach, fennel and a hint of sea breeze while the palate is pleasantly weighty with tangy acidity providing counterbalance, the finish possessing a slight saltiness.

Rupert & Rothschild Vignerons have announced that head winemaker Yvonne Lester will be leaving the company after nearly two decades. She began her career there in September 2001 taking up her current position in 2012. Her intension is to take some time off before “exploring new opportunities in the wine industry”.

Meanwhile, Vriesenhof in Stellenbosch has made known that Nicky Claasens will be departing after 13 years of being winemaker – he and his wife Bettina will be emigrating to Germany.

JJ’s Indian Cuisine, Kalk Bay

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