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South Africa’s inspiring women winemakers
Anyone who reckons winemaking is a man’s job should head for South Africa and see the kind of wines that women are making in some of the country’s most exciting cellars.
It would also be a mistake to think they make ‘feminine’ wines. As with their male colleagues you’ll find a range of styles from crisp saline sauvignon blancs to robust grenaches made from low yielding old vines.
Here are 8 to follow I met on my recent trip.
Erika Obermeyer (@erikaobermeyer)
Her wines are not available in the UK yet but Erika Obermeyer is definitely one of the Cape’s up and coming stars having been nominated Newcomer of the Year in the 2019 Platter Wine Guide. Formerly the assistant winemaker at Graham Beck she went out on her own when the winery made the decision to focus on their sparkling wines and clearly hasn’t looked back
Look out for: the superbly elegant 2015 Erika O Cabernet Sauvignon
Andrea Mullineux (@mullineuxwines)
One of the original Swartland revolutionaries Mullineux’ wines, which she makes with her husband Chris, have become some of the most expensive and sought after in the Cape since Leeuw family invested in the business in 2013 (she also makes the Leeuw Passant range).
Look out for: Her fabulously mineral 2017 Granite Chenin Blanc and delicious straw wine.
Corlea Fourie (@bosmanwinemaker)
Innovative winemaker at Bosman Family Wines who not only makes one of the best Fairtrade wines I’ve tasted (the Adama white) but orange wine and a pet nat (naturally sparkling wine). A keen cook too judging by her instagram account (@corleafourie)
“Pet Nat is such a pleasure to produce. In essence it is HARVEST JUICE. It’s the Weiss Beer of the winemaking world - where we get to bottle something that resembles the wines that we as winemakers get to taste in the cellar.”
Look out for: the luxuriant 2016 Optenhorst Chenin Blanc from the third oldest chenin vineyard in South Africa.
Riandri Visser (@_Riandri_)
Formerly assistant winemaker at Cape Point, Riandri had the unenviable task of stepping into her high profile predecessor Duncan Savage’s shoes but is now confidently putting her personal stamp on its distinctive coastal-influenced whites
Look out for: Cape Point Isliedh 2017, a fabulously textured sauvignon blanc (awarded 96 by Tim Atkin). UK retailers still seems to be on the 2015
Trizanne Barnard (@TrizanneB)
Known as much for her love of surfing as wine Trizanne makes some classy whites from Elim fruit under her Trizanne Signature Wines (TSW) label but also dabbles with syrah from the Swartland. Part of the Zoo Cru group of small independent winemakers
Look out for: her wonderfully expressive cool climate TSW Swartland Syrah. (I tasted the '16 but again it's the 2015 that's currently available in the UK from e.g. Border Wines)
I’m always looking for freshness, uniqueness and contrast, which I have found in the cooler temperature vineyards of Elim for Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon contrasted with the concentrated reds of the drier Swartland. (From a recent interview with The Buyer)
Marelise Niemann (@momentowines)
A passionate advocate for grenache - "the best grape on earth” since she did a vintage in Priorat with Eben Sadie, Marelise makes her wines under the Momento label at the Gabrielskloof cellar in Bot River, sourcing grapes from all over the Western Cape.
“There’s a great future for grenache - it needs to be planted on South African soils” she said in an interview with Jamie Goode during the very dry 2018 harvest. “It’s just thriving in these dry conditions - small berries, small bunches, green leaves - and they look happy"
Look out for: both her grenaches - red and white (available from Armit wines)
Elizma Visser @olifantsberg
Another grenache fan is Elizma Visser of Olifantsberg who makes wine in the up and coming Breedekloof - in the process acquiring the most impressively dirty hands I’ve ever seen on a winemaker during harvest (She’s also the viticulturist) Her chenin is top notch too. According to her importer Hallgarten Wines if she hadn’t pursued wine, she would have liked to have become a professional rally driver"
Look out for: Olifantsberg's Lark chenin blanc 2017 (The Breedekloof Chenin is available in the UK from winebuyers.com)
Samantha O’Keefe (@lismorewine)
Not a native Saffer but a Californian with a background in TV who somehow ended up establishing a highly acclaimed cool climate wine estate (Lismore) on the site of a former dairy farm in Greyton. There she makes a supremely elegant chardonnay and viognier and again, a gorgeous syrah. (How do you get these flavours, someone asked her over dinner. “It’s terroir, dude”
Look out for: her beautifully floral fresh Estate Reserve Syrah.
Picture of Corlea Fourie (top left) by Tom Cannavan.
I visited the Cape as a guest of Wines of South Africa.

How we started our Batonnage podcast
I suspect a lot of you are podcast enthusiasts but I’ve come late to the party and probably wouldn’t have dreamt of doing one myself, to be honest, if my collaborator Liam Steevenson hadn’t come up with the perfect name - Bâtonnage.
Liam is one of those Renaissance men who seems to be able to turn his hand to anything which in terms of the wine trade means he’s bought wine (for Waitrose), sold wine, marketed wine and made wine - in places as far apart as the Languedoc and India. He was also one of the youngest Masters of Wine but despite all this cleverness is one of the least stuffy wine people I know.

We’ve done a couple of events together this year - in Borough Wines Tëte à Tête series and bounced off each other rather well so it wasn’t a massive leap to think of podcasting. Even then we probably wouldn’t have done it if Liam hadn’t come up with the name Bâtonnage which refers to the process of stirring the lees or dead yeast cells in a wine to give it flavour and texture - hence the subtitle ‘stirring discussions about wine'. His design team also came up with a brilliant logo so we couldn’t not run with it.
What sort of podcast should we make though? There seemed to be two kinds - one largely dominated by the presenters indulging in jolly banter - the other interviewing guests. We wanted something between the two - a genuine and lively discussion giving our expert guests a platform while (hopefully) contributing our own insight and expertise.
The only drawback was that while we had plenty of ideas for content neither of us had the faintest idea what we were doing - what recording equipment we needed, how to edit, how to upload a podcast to the various podcast platforms. Fortunately Liam had a friend David McWilliam who was not only a bit of a techie but also a wine expert (he works for Liam’s dad’s firm Steevenson Wines). So he became the third member of the team (pictured in our inaugural selfie at the Dartmouth Food Festival!) coming along for each of our sessions and - even more challenging - making sense of the recordings.
Even with his help it’s been a steep learning curve - trying to make sure we create lively but listenable content, not talking over each other, not rambling on to long. Working out how to communicate what a wine tastes like on air and how many you can sensibly try. (we reckon about three works best). At first we forgot to ask guests to bring along a wine to talk about and had to make a mad dash to the supermarket to find an appropriate wine for the subject. Talking to other broadcasters (Lawrence Francis of Interpreting Wine was very helpful) that’s apparently par for the course
We also wondered who we would actually be talking to. People who knew a lot about wine? People who knew very little? People who worked in the wine trade? People whose day job was something else entirely? I guess we want to appeal - as most podcasters do - to the curious. One of the most gratifying things from the feedback we’ve had is that both wine professionals and people who don’t regard themselves as wine experts have enjoyed it.
So what have we recorded so far? Well we started with a discussion on Terroir - the term that refers to the soil, orientation and climate of a particular piece of land and asked whether that was the most important thing to know about a wine. That was with Liam’s fellow MW John Atkinson.
Next we discussed the extraordinary phenomenon that is New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc with winemakers Simon and Jane Waghorn of Astrolabe wines. Our third podcast was on familiar territory for me - Wine and Indian Food with chef Romy Gill (it’s a bit of a riot) and in our latest on Bordeaux with Sunday Times wine columnist Will Lyons Liam and I muse why we don’t love Bordeaux as much as we should.
The podcasts are scheduled to go out every fortnight and you’ll find us on iTunes, Soundcloud and Spotify. We hope you’ll join us there!
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Why I’ve become a fully blown flexitarian
It should, I admit, have happened before now but a working weekend away with an overnight stay a chain hotel and a couple of long train journeys has finally convinced me I can no longer eat cheap meat.
'What’s taken you so long?' I can hear some of you ask sarcastically and I truly don’t know. I don’t buy cheap meat in a supermarket but when I’m on the road I seem to fall on any trashy food for comfort
The first nail in the coffin was a particularly disgusting Korean chicken burger at Leon, a chain that should know better. There was far too much meat for the £5-odd it cost so I can’t imagine it was ethically reared and had literally no taste at all. While I’m at it I don’t know in what respect it was Korean - a bit of cabbage and some mildly spiced gloopy orange sauce, I'm guessing (a ‘gochu-jang chilli mayo slaw’ according to their website which sounds much more impressive than it tasted) I left it after a couple of bites. Even if you love chicken this is a pathetic apology for a burger.
The second was one of those dreary breakfast buffets at the hotel I was staying at (a pretty posh Hilton Doubletree). I passed on the bacon which was oozing white goo but added a sausage to my plate. It tasted slightly fishy - nothing resembling pork. Again I left it after a mouthful.
Those of you who are fully blown veggies and vegans won’t be impressed by the fact that it’s the foul taste and texture of mass produced meat that has finally driven me to this conclusion rather than welfare considerations of which I’m well aware but like many people I tend not to think as much about where my food comes from as I should.
Over the years I’ve consumed bacon rolls and BLTs with no taste of bacon, soggy baguettes with limp, waterlogged ham, endless fried chicken of questionable origin and dodgy meat curries and kebabs. That has to stop. No great hardship when the vegetarian - and even vegan - options are so appealing these days (though I don’t count the frozen (I assume) mushrooms, undercooked, underripe tomatoes and tasteless oily hash browns on the same breakfast buffet). I will miss the occasional sausage roll but can always indulge when I feel confident about the origin of the pork.
Fish is a better option but there are issues with that too. I really don’t want to eat cheap farmed salmon, given the well documented health issues on which you should read campaigning food writer Joanna Blythman, and that means another sandwich filling - and smoked salmon - off the menu. But again the taste, and particularly the oily, greasy texture, is appalling
I realise that for many people eating more expensive meat isn’t an option and that it’s hard enough to get kids to eat healthily without cutting it out of their diet. I like to think if I was bringing up young children again on a tight budget I’d feed them a mainly vegetarian diet but wouldn’t blame anyone for not following suit.
But for me enough is enough. I don’t intend to quiz every restaurant and food producer I come across about their sourcing policy (I haven't the time or energy) but to use my common sense from now on to judge whether eating meat or fish is appropriate. If it’s a cheap food outlet, I’m veggie from now on and selectively pescatarian and carnivorous elsewhere.
Tell me I’m not going far enough - I’m sure you will - but it makes sense to me.

Why it matters if you don’t show up for a restaurant you’ve booked
Every week my local restaurants in Bristol tweet that a table has become available that evening. You might say they’re the lucky ones - at least the customer has let them know though that’s scant consolation if the table is for more than two. Others simply fail to show up.
No shows have become the bane of restaurants’ lives, cutting already slender margins to the bone. Expensive ingredients go to waste. Regulars you’d like to fit in may be denied a table. One restaurant told me this morning that only a third of the people who had booked a table one evening turned up.
Since when did we become so careless of people’s livelihoods or frankly so selfish? People seem to feel they have the right to book a number of places then see what they feel like on the day. Without bothering to let the other restaurants know. Would they do that to a family member or a friend? To a work colleague they’d arranged to meet? Almost certainly not yet how long does it take to make a phone call? Seconds.
What can restaurants do about no shows?
What on earth can restaurants do? Charge beforehand like a theatre, cinema or sporting venue? Most hotels will charge you for a night’s accommodation if you cancel in 24 hours. Only a very small minority of highly regarded restaurants like The Clove Club in London and Casamia in Bristol do.
Even asking for a deposit appears to deter customers. One chef who tried it said his trade fell right off. Customers simply decided to eat elsewhere. What about collaborating with other local restaurants I asked him? “A few of us agreed to do it but I was the only one who gave it a try. Business was disastrous. I had to give it up after a couple of weeks”
Name and shame as The Cauldron in Bristol did yesterday? It might well be effective but restaurants still hesitate to do it in case the cancellation is genuine - and for fear of what damage sites like Tripadvisor can do if the disgruntled customer complains. Yes, everyone has to rush to hospital with a sick child at some point but at least get someone to call to say you can’t make it.
It’s up to all of us who value our local restaurants to try and help with this problem otherwise they’ll simply go out of business. And it’s the rest of us who end up paying in terms of higher meal costs that have to be factored in
So If you have to cancel give as much notice as possible, preferably a couple of days.
Don’t double or treble-book
If someone else has made the booking for you and you can’t make it, make sure they let the restaurant know. If they brag about having booked several restaurants make them aware just how damaging that is to a restaurateur's livelihood
Local restaurants band together to make people aware of the cost of not turning up and share a blacklist of repeat offenders. (I personally think you should name and shame but can understand why you hesitate.)
Local media, don’t automatically assume the customer is right - check the complaint is genuine. (Good to see the Bath Chronicle highlighting the problem today.) Tripadvisor (if anyone bothers to monitor Tripadvisor) why not be a little more careful about blatantly spiteful posts?
Local councils and business organisations - support your local restaurant sector by highlighting this problem
Booking sites could also do more to support restaurants like OpenTable's #bookresponsibly campaign. They also have a detailed No Show policy.
Let’s say #notonoshows
In the hour or so since I posted it there have been reports that no shows were a particular problem this Valentine's night. Top Bath restaurateur Gordon Jones said he had 47 people on his waiting list who he was unable to accommodate then had 4 customers fail to show up. Bar 44 in Cardiff had a worse experience still - it had 16 tables who didn't turn up
If you’re a restaurant have you had experience of no-shows and what have they cost you? Any thoughts about what the industry can do about it? One interesting idea that's come from the exchange of views on Twitter might be that customers who paid a deposit or, better still, the full cost up front (a possibly solution to V day no shows) might get a discount. Worth thinking about ...

10 Valentine's Day treats to enjoy on your own
The usual bombardment of hearts and flowers that heralds Valentine’s Day is bound to make anyone who doesn’t have a Valentine feel a bit out of it. But there’s no reason not to enjoy yourself . . .
There are any number of tempting ready-made dishes and desserts in the shops (there will be even more on the 15th when the supermarkets have unsold Valentine’s Day stock to sell) so there’s no need to even cook.
You can of course buy mini bottles of wine which are apparently selling well, the Co-op told me recently, but they tend to be quite basic wines and disproportionately expensive. Buy a whole bottle and stopper the rest...
Here are my top 10 Valentine’s treats for happy singletons
Champagne, sole goujons and tartare sauce. (Or Cava and fish fingers - fizz and fried fish always hits the spot)
Generously-filled smoked salmon sandwiches and Sauvignon Blanc (Yes, even better than champagne)
Sushi and prosecco There’s a slight sweetness in both which makes them hit it off perfectly. This would be my choice btw.
A BIG steak and a glass of Malbec. Or any other medium-to-full-bodied red you enjoy . . .
Mushroom risotto and a glass of pinot noir. You could always add a sneaky bit of truffle oil (to the risotto, not the pinot obviously)
Macaroni cheese (or even an oozy cheese toastie) and a glass of Merlot
An IPA and a good curry. IPA (aka India Pale Ale) is better with curry than lager
Bread and butter pudding and a glass of Sauternes (or other late harvest Sauvignon Blanc) Or even, in this weather, a steamed syrup sponge ...
A chocolate brownie and a glass of PX (very sweet) sherry or a mini pack of Maltesers and a dram of Lagavulin. (Really! Try it!)
A couple of scoops of lemon sorbet topped with a shot of frozen vodka
And not so much a pairing more a hot cocktail - a mug of hot chocolate or cocoa made with a good slug of Bailey’s or other Irish cream liqueur (Lidl does a great one)
What would you treat yourself to if you were/are spending Valentine’s night on your own?
* Before one of you points it out this site of course is not immune to V Day mania. You’ll find recommendations for the most popular Valentines’ Day foods, a list of the sexiest cheeses, suggestions for Valentine’s cocktails and a cheat's menu for lazy lovers . . .
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