Waterford Chardonnay 2007

Crazy good.

Much is made of the paucity of decent restaurants in Cape Town’s southern suburbs but I’ve always found A Tavola in Claremont more than passable. I met my sister there for lunch yesterday for an end-of-year catch-up over lunch and we shared the establishment’s signature zucchini fritti as well as bruschetta porcini for starters while I had quail liver spaghetti as a main while sis being the sensible girl that she is opted for a Caesar salad. This is trattoria cooking with a modern twist: not particularly intricate or complex but nonetheless satisfying.

Having phoned ahead to establish that corkage was R30 a bottle, I brought along Waterford Chardonnay 2007, which was sublime. A forthcoming and very enticing nose with notes of blue orange (or “lunchbox orange” to be less euphemistic but perhaps more evocative), marzipan and oatmeal on the nose; the palate, by contrast, was pleasantly restrained marked by excellent fruit delineation and lemon-like acidity. The Waterford winemaking team of Kevin Arnold and Francois Haasbroek pride themselves on making food-friendly wines and so this wine proved to be. Score: 18/20.