It seems it’s going to get us all, this damned virus – one way or another, sooner or later. The world proves itself to be unified after all, and even here at the foot of Africa we’re already involved in the implications of Covid19 and will be increasingly so. The South African wine industry undoubtedly alread is, and, like everyone else, trembling with uncertainty. I asked the Sales and Marketing Director of a prestigious winery to comment, and was told that, yes, “The problem for us, and all wineries who export significant amounts, is that it is almost impossible to predict the effect on our sales for the year. I’ve discussed the situation with a few of our importers and although they say that business is quiet, they can’t yet say how this will affect orders from us this year.”
A top-level producer I asked tried hard to remain balanced and un-hyped about it all. “We’re trying to be proactive and are asking our customers around the world for their best projections of any impact on their allocations”, he said. “We don’t want to create or reinforce any negative sentiment, as this itself could manifest in poorer sales, but we do need to be realistic and prepared. So far only one export order is on hold and in a few countries our agents have told us they might be behind projections, or lower than last year. Certainly to expect a lot of growth anywhere is not realistic.”
The CEO of Wines of South Africa (WOSA), Siobhan Thompson, repeated the central conundrum of uncertainty: “The effect of the virus is such a difficult thing to quantify at the moment….” For China, “shipments of wine are definitely down and that can already be seen in the Jan and Feb exports”. As for Europe, “we have no idea what will happen”. The biggest concern is obviously the big export markets for Cape wine – the UK, Germany, Netherlands. What will happen there and the implications for consumption – and consequently imports – can’t yet be foreseen. Greg Sherwood noted this week in his column on this website his concern, with particular reference to the UK, with “pressures that are mounting for restaurants, pubs and bars, that have already started to see their footfall and revenue decimated”.
Siobhan Thompson points to the cancellation and postponement of shows and trading platforms (the likes of ProWein in Germany cancelled, Vinexpo postponed at the very least, with many more certain to follow) – as particularly important: “These are critical for our exporters as this is where they sell, make deals and determine prices, so this could have an impact going forward in terms of exporting the new vintage.” The Sales and Marketing Director I spoke to – who is right now on a visit to Europe and north America, and maybe should hurry home while the planes are flying – pointed to a central significance of ProWein being cancelled: “I had to cancel all the meetings scheduled with current and potential importers.” In the USA, it was slightly better: “Our importer cancelled their portfolio tastings in California, but fortunately the New York one went ahead – so not a wasted trip for me.”
It’s not only exports of wine that need to be considered by local producers, but imports. As the top-level producer I mentioned before said: “We also have to consider the supply side – a lot of our packaging comes from overseas (paper for our labels for example), so we’re ordering these early to make sure we don’t run out…. Even if we have orders we can’t ship them unlabelled.”
And us mere wine-drinkers, do we need to worry? There are reports of, for example, the weird Australians besieging their supermarkets as they panic about the prospects for toilet-paper in a comprehensively virused world, but I haven’t seen indications of terror that the liquor store shelves might be cleared. For those without established stocks of red and white, however, it might be a good idea to make sure that there’s enough of the good stuff to help keep you cheerful when you cancel everything and stay home till the world sorts this out (forget about the vastly more cataclysmic impending climatic disaster for now).
Me, I’m trying to keep slightly hopeful about my already booked visit to Venice and Bologna in late April. The thought of those places being quiet and as empty of tourists as they haven’t been for a century is marvellous – but even if they’re accessible, I don’t want them to be quite dead. Nor me, for that matter (I’m placed, age-wise, on the rising curve of risk); but there would be worse places to have Covid19 than an unwontedly serene Piazza San Marco. Bottle and glass to hand.
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Dare to know!
Charles Withington is a négociant based in Darling. His Voorkamer brandy is distilled in the Klein Karoo and is aged for seven years, his barrel selection of 50% French oak and 50% old Bourbon barrels lending a particular point of difference. The nose shows orange, apricot, vanilla and spice while the palate fruity and sweet in the best sense with a comforting warmth to the finish. Mellow and smooth textured, a real pleasure to drink. Price: R413 a bottle.
I’m starting to think that life is a series of mishaps punctuated by good bottles of wine. It was approximately 01h00 this past Sunday when a green Jeep Wrangler hit various vehicles parked on street outside our house before crashing through our garage door into the back of my Honda CR-V and then fleeing the scene.
Shoot-out.
Earlier in the evening, we’d cooked lamb chops on the braai which we paired with the 2014 vintage of both Diemersdal MM Louw 2014 and Longridge Ekliptika 2014. A large part of the motivation for selecting these two wines arose as a consequence of the recent 10 Year Old Wine Report featuring the 2010 vintage and the vague feeling that to wait 10 years to broach modern SA red is, in many instances, to wait too long…
The MM Louw is the designation for Durbanville property Diemersdal’s pinnacle wines, the 2014 red being a blend of 64% Cabernet Sauvignon, 21% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc, 5% Malbec and 5% Petit Verdot while the Ekliptika 2014 from Longridge in Stellenbosch is Cab Franc-driven with Cab and Merlot also in the mix, alcohol of the former 14.5% and of the latter 14%.
It is interesting to note that the MM Louw 2014 never fared that well with the Winemag.co.zo panel rating 86 in the Cape Bordeaux-style category tasting of 2016 and again 2017 (the more modest Private Collection 2014 being preferred gaining a rating of 90 in 2016) while the Ekliptika 2014 found favour with a score of 91 in 2017.
Drinking these wines primarily for pleasure now, I’d ultimately be hard pressed to say that there is a very vast difference in basic quality. The issue with the MM Louw is that it is a wine premised on fruit power and the uninitiated are probably going to be more easily impressed as a result whereas the Ekliptika has more restraint about it.
That said, there is a sense that the passage of time has mellowed both of them and removed some of their individual outstanding characteristics that they showed in youth. Are they drinking optimally? I’m sure that they will go for a while yet but I certainly did not feel guilty of committing infanticide.
Moreover, when it comes to professional tasting notes, I’ve long since given up suggesting drinking windows as it is such an inexact science – wines of great reputation sometimes disappoint while the more modest can provide happy surprises when it comes to bottle maturation. Equally, there is one sort of pleasure to be had drinking wine very young and musing what it might become and a different sort drinking it old and imagining how it used to be. My contention is that when to open any particular wine should be entirely at the discretion of the individual.
In any event, lamb prepared over an open fire paired with something made in the Bordeaux idiom is a simple pleasure and these are to be savoured as you simply don’t know when you might find yourself standing in your nightclothes giving a statement to the police.
Sweet smelling.
In Jancis Robinson’s online guide to grape varieties, she refers to Albariño simply as “the perfumed, elegant aristocrat of the Rías Baixas in north-west Spain”. Newton Johnson in Upper Hemel en Aarde Valley pioneered it locally with a few other producers following suit, namely Nederburg, Springfield and most recently Ginny Povall of Botanica Wines.
Povall’s Flower Girl 2019 comes from vines on her Stellenbosch property grafted in 2018 onto rootstock planted in 2009 and winemaking involved fermentation and maturation for six months in concrete egg. The nose shows notes of naartjie, peach and dried herbs while the palate has just the right amount of palate weight, vibrancy acidity and a pithy finish. Possessing great focus, this is a promising debut. Price: R200 a bottle.
CE’s rating: 91/100.
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Worth enduring.
Villiersdorp Winery has a smart sweet wine under its premium “Since 1922” label, this made from vine-dried Chenin Blanc, fermented and matured for six months in old oak. Notes of straw and honey to go with peach and apricot while the palate had good fruit concentration and freshness before a dry finish – alcohol is 11.15%. Well balanced, you have the sense that this has the potential to age with benefit over at least the next five years. Price: R120 per 375ml bottle.
CE’s rating: 89/100.
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I remember the financial crisis of September 2008 very clearly. Being ensconced in a fine wine shop in Holland Park in West London, otherwise known as London’s banker belt, where the brains of London’s financial establishment lived, allowed me to brush shoulders with some of the most influential financiers in Europe on a daily basis.
Back in the early noughties, many of these employees were North Americans posted over to London with enormous relocation packages, huge expense accounts, massive salaries and even bigger annual bonuses. Times were very fruitful for local residents who would stream in to shop for fine wine purchases every evening on their way home from the financial mile or from perhaps slightly further afield in Canary Wharf. This was still an era of excess, a time of hedonistic purchases and conspicuous consumption, when an eyelid would not be batted if someone purchased a £150 or £200 (R4,100) bottle of Bordeaux or Californian cult Cabernet Sauvignon on a Tuesday night to accompany their sausages and mash. Afterall, we were experiencing one of the longest bull runs the western world’s financial markets had ever witnessed with almost 16 years of consecutive positive growth under the three big spending government terms of Labour’s Tony Blair and his chancellor Gordon Brown. It really was cool Britannia!
The mid-2000s also happened to coincide with the true re-emergence of some genuinely high quality red wines from South Africa after a decidedly disappointing decade post-1994 for premium red wine quality from the Cape. But find their way out of the wilderness they did and by 2004 and 2006, some very impressive red wines were being bottled by producers in the Western Cape. Who could forget the iconic Kanonkop Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 that beat off the able-bodied challenge of the supposedly grander Paul Sauer 2004, to win the Platter South African Wine Guide Red Wine of the Year, or the exceptional 2006 De Toren Fusion V that was still only in its eighth vintage.
I, of course, have never been one to miss a golden opportunity and during this sunshine period, I set about converting droves of these primarily North American drinkers away from expensive Napa and Sonoma Valley reds to the pleasures of regal Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon and premium Bordeaux-style blends. The time was right, the quality was just about right and the prices were most certainly right!
But all good things must come to an end, and this golden period of free spending and guiltless consumption ground to a shuddering halt after the true magnitude of the Lehmans crash started to sink in. Many of my best customers, it has to be said, were fortunately senior enough in their institutions to be the ones doing the firing as opposed to being the ones being fired. However, we did sadly lose a lot of very close and dear customers, many of whom had grown to become very good personal friends, to the job transfer market with countless families being returned back to the USA for the first time in over a decade or alternatively, many being reluctantly transferred to the more lucrative markets of Hong Kong, China or Singapore.
So a decade on, as we once again sit in the midst of one of the most serious social and economic periods of crisis and upheaval experienced in Europe since the second world war, it gently reminds me of some of the darker hours of 2008 when the UK banking system literally came within 24 hours of shutting down and imploding. Though I should add, that there are few truly dark moments in life that cannot be substantially brightened by the consumption of a few bottles of very fine red or white wine. With the coronavirus crisis starting to really make itself felt but thankfully also finally being taken seriously by all governments as Italy becomes the first European country to be placed under lock down and quarantine since World War Two, all of us in the UK wine trade look on with nervous trepidation. With Prowein cancelled until March 2021, Vinitaly postponed but more likely also cancelled for 2020, eyes are now starting to turn starkly to both Bordeaux En-primeur 2020 that is scheduled to kick off at the end of March and also the London Wine Trade Fair that is booked to commence for three days on the 18th of May. There is now a significant likelihood that both these events will also be either cancelled or else greatly curtailed.
Wondering around a large importer trade tasting yesterday in central London, wine trade attendance figures were as expected, very sparse and producer attendance figures almost non-existent. A sad sight to see considering the enormous cost and planning required to organise a successful event of this size. But the greater wine trade will survive and consumers will continue to buy and drink wine, lock down or no lock down. My real concern lies more acutely with the pressures that are mounting for restaurants, pubs and bars, that have already started to see their footfall and revenue decimated. Therefore, I for one plan to keep calm and carry on, continuing to frequent my local establishments as long as I am permitted to do so. As we batten down the hatches here in London over the coming weeks, spare a thought for our livers while we drink our way through yet another crisis.
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Old school.
Vergenoegd, adjacent as it is to that famed Stellenbosch property Meerlust, is a farm that has always demanded at least some reverence in its own right. It was in the Faure family from the 1820s but was sold to German investment group Livia in 2015. The hospitality offering has been upgraded substantially since then but what of the wines? Tasting notes and ratings for the two premium bottlings as follows:
Vergenoegd Löw Cabernet Sauvignon 2015
Price: R380
A complex nose of cassis, herbs and cigar box but also more developed notes of undergrowth and earth. Not too ripe or forceful despite an alcohol of 14.5% – relatively lean and fresh with firm tannins making for a very dry finish.
CE’s rating: 90/100.
Vergenoegd Löw Estate Blend 2015
Price: R450
The nose shows red and black fruit plus mint and other herbs. The palate provides a curious sense of both green and very ripe fruit. Generally, there is a sweetness and a softness to the wine, the tannins already resolved – not unpleasing but probably not set to improve further.
CE’s rating: 88/100.
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Brad Ball reminds me a bit of Jamie Oliver. He’s got a big face and a big grin. He produces authentic Italian, French bistro and Japanese dishes that work for comfort eaters. He genuinely cares about the environment: Ball has not served a prawn in any of his restaurants for years. Plus, he seems like a hugger.
Ball’s latest restaurant, The Blockhouse Kitchen at Constantia Uitsig, will not surprise fans of his previous Constantia restaurants – places like The River Café, Bistro 1682 and Peddlars & Co. The Blockhouse Kitchen (or “TBK”, as it’s referred to on the menu) does spicy-crispy Asia-inspired small plates, bistro-inspired mains like steaks with duck fat potatoes, and authentic Italian pastas and risottos.
Here’s what’s new: Ball is having a love affair with the land. On the restaurant website there are phrases like “conscious kitchen”, “freshest seasonal and local produce” and “whole animals, fish and vegetables”.
It is absolutely nothing new – in fact it’s almost standard – for chefs these days to say they prefer to use local ingredients, in season, and that they abhor waste, choosing instead to cook “nose to tail” with animals and “root to tip” with plants. There’s a bit of fussing with ferments, preserves and pickles – and with drying and smoking – to prove that even in-season excess is not wasted.
It sounds good but it doesn’t always taste good. Cooking with the seasons isn’t easy. It requires flexibility and knowledge. What’s the best way to showcase a box of baby fennel bulbs? You need to decide today, and it needs to be on the menu tonight. Seasonal cooking requires humility. You might love the grill, but some produce is better raw, and some is better stewed. Customers are another challenge: your braised leeks may be exceptional, but will your seasonal dish outsell your famous dirty cheeseburger?
At The Blockhouse Kitchen, Ball doesn’t change the menu every day. He prints a new menu every season, with signature dishes like the eggs benedict and “salt ‘n’ vinegar” potatoes never shifting. There is, however, a specials board that changes every few days.
We ordered the tuna tataki and pigs cheeks off this board. We ordered fish cakes, crispy beef and a green salad off the summer menu. We were excited about the tuna tataki. Ball’s beef tataki at Bistro 1682 was the signature small plate. The fish cakes were coming with miso and lime mayonnaise; the crispy beef dish included onion rings, radish, slivers of ripe chilli and a thick, dark, dipping sauce. We only ordered the salad because we thought it sounded ladylike.
“We should have a salad,” one of us said.
Rocket and Pecorino salad.
“Oh yes, a salad. Uh, let’s just get a simple one; this ‘rocket and Pecorino’?”
I’m not a fan of salad. I’m more than happy for other people to have it – yes, I’ve heard about the health benefits – but at a restaurant, especially, where you’re paying for someone to cook for you, why have something raw? Unless it’s to spare yourself the tedium of making a salad at home – a motive I understand. At home, salad is essentially a human nose bag that will require a full half hour to eat, with oily watercress stems refusing to fit in your mouth and adhering to your cheek.
Imagine our surprise when our favourite of Ball’s five delicious small plates the salad.
It must have been a pretty good salad.
It was. And simple too: wild rocket, avo, pecorino and a lemony dressing. There were three types of seeds: sunflower, pumpkin and black sesame.
What made it so special? The dressing, for a start. The vinaigrette was the merest gloss of extra virgin olive oil, acid and seasoning. There was no stinging puddle of dressing at the bottom of the bowl.
The wild rocket tasted like it had just been picked. It was at its grassiest, pepperiest best, with no bitterness to the stems. The seeds were not the slightest bit stale – nor were there too many of them: a few pinches, not a handful – and the avocado was perfectly ripe: creamy, not buttery.
Adding very mature cheese to a salad is not a new idea. Pecorino, like its cousin Parmesan, is famous for the depth of its umami flavour. In Ball’s salad, it added a touch of luxury too. The aged, crystal-studded cheese balanced the bright freshness of the other ingredients.
Ball is a big fan of local cheese. If I’d had room I would have ordered the cheese plate with house pickles and house relish. One of my favourite things about the décor at “TBK” is the mantlepieces crowded with pickle jars. The interior designer would never have approved it: the mantles over the grand Victorian fireplaces are high, grand affairs. On them, Ball has crammed giant Consol jars full of onions, carrots and cauliflower florets.
His heart, it seems, is in seasonal ingredients. The tagline of The Blockhouse Kitchen is “Social. Seasonal. Simple.” It’s not unusual for chefs to go “back to basics” after decades of crowd-pleasing. Jürgen Schneider held a Michelin star for 18 years in Germany. Now, at Springfontein Eats in Stanford, the heroes of his dishes are ingredients from the farm like carrots, eggs and pears.
If you scratch the surface, there’s a tension between Ball’s current artistic direction and the very real imperatives suggested by a casual destination restaurant with four separate dining spaces and a whopping 250 seats.
Since he opened in May last year, Ball’s comfort foods have drawn by far the most attention: that dirty cheeseburger, that benedict, the TBK pork sausages, the steaks, the “soda & spice battered hake” and the baked cheesecake.
During the day, Ball’s target market is Constantia ladies-who-lunch, Westlake office execs, and young parents with little children. In the evening, TBK is an excellent mid-week date night venue for locals from the many luxury estates nearby.
It’s a crowd that values quality but not necessarily innovation. They might enjoy – as we did – the dressed bokchoi and broccoli served alongside proteins, but there’s no sense from the menu that vegans and vegetarians are regular visitors. My guess is that the Botriver beef burger is ordered ten times more often than the steak tartare (with house walnut pesto, cured egg yolk, extra virgin olive oil and lavash, an Armenian flatbread).
The dessert menu is a yawn: ice cream, brownie, Crème brûlée, baked cheesecake and lemon tart. It’s like Ball pushed the envelope and had his way with the in-house smoked trout and the BHK kimchi, then caved to popular taste when it came to pudding.
We drank Constantia Uitsig’s Natura Vista with our lunch. A blend of Sauvignon and Semillon, it was an appropriately crisp accompaniment to a sunny lunch. There are four Constantia Uitsig whites on the menu, and one red. All are available by “the glass”, an enormous portion of wine served in both a large wine glass and a carafe, for top-ups. There is also a Constantia Uitsig MCC and a muscat dessert wine. The wine list has 30 entries in all. Naturally it favours the Constantia Valley – the oldest wine-producing region in the Southern Hemisphere, mind you.
The cocktail menu reminded me how many British ex-pats there are in Constantia, with its “proper Prosecco” and “dirty Pimms”.
The Blockhouse Kitchen is open pretty much all the time: seven days a week, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is “child-friendly”, with a play area on site and a bike track nearby.
Ball told me he is delighted to be back at Constantia Uitsig. It’s a site that holds deep meaning for him, he said. It’s been many years since Ball made his name in this very building, as chef of The River Café. If his Constantia neighbours lend their support to his current passion for simple, seasonal tastes, the gastronomic rewards will be greater than comfort.
The Blockhouse Kitchen: 021 794 301 , Constantia Uitsig, Spaanschemat Road, Constantia; blockhousekitchen.co.za
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Entries for the Chenin Blanc Report 2020 sponsored by multinational financial services company Prescient are now open, the focus being on 1) Chenin Blanc; and 2) Cape White Blends, the latter defined as those wines containing a Chenin Blanc component of more than 15% and less than 85%.
winemag.co.za will be generating a number of category reports throughout the year – see here. Each report will be based on the outcome of a blind tasting of wines entered. Upon the release of a report, a top 10 will be announced and the year will culminate in a gala event when the individual best wine in each category will be revealed. These top-performing wines will subsequently be shown at tastings in both Johannesburg and London.
Wines will be tasted by a three-person panel consisting of Christian Eedes as chairman as well as Roland Peens and James Pietersen, both of Wine Cellar, Cape Town merchants and cellarers of fine wine.
Entries are now closed. The report will be released on 16 June.
Please include the number of the relevant class on your entry form:
An entry fee of R950 including VAT per wine applies and you will be directed to our online shop to make payment after you have completed the form below. Please note that if you want to enter multiple wines, each will require a separate form although payment can be made all at once.
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