What I Drank Last Night

From the December issue of GQ: As with everything in wine, decanting is more complicated than you think. Yes, pouring wine out of its bottle into a specially designed container adds a special flourish to a fine dining experience. And yes, it helps separate old wine from any sediment that has formed in the bottle. [...]

As featured in the last issue of Longevity: The silly season is officially here and many of us will enjoy higher than normal alcohol consumption as a result. Choose sensible drinking options and the inevitable New Year come-down doesn’t need to be quite so severe. Those concerned with their body weight often opt for spirit-based [...]

Below are my dozen best wines for 2011. To appear on the list, they had to be from South Africa and in general circulation. Where I encountered them blind, I scored them well enough but they appear here in that they provided me with great drinking pleasure. Some are established benchmarks, others are relative newcomers [...]

There were 140 wines put forward for 5 Stars in Platter’s 2012 of which 45 were endorsed. In what must be something of a record, I nominated 13 wines, none of which my colleagues thought were worthy of the guide’s ultimate accolade. These were: De Grendel Koetshuis Sauvignon Blanc 2011 De Grendel Viognier 2011 Ernie [...]

As featured in the last issue of Longevity: While getting older is usually fraught with negative implications, wine is a wonderful exception. It’s one of the few foodstuffs that can improve with age, and this is also one of its key fascinations. It has to be said upfront, however, only a small subgroup of wines [...]

The first National Bottled Wine Show in South Africa was introduced by the South African National Wine Show Association in 1990 and renamed the Veritas Awards from 1991 making it the longest running wine competition in South Africa. I participated as a judge for the first time this year and while it was generally a [...]

As featured in the last issue of Longevity: The French Paradox is the observation that the French suffer a relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease, despite having a diet relatively rich in saturated fats. When a description of this paradox was aired in the United States on the CBS network news programme 60 Minutes [...]

Publication of my ratings of the wines to be sold on the Cape Winemakers Guild auction (see here) has caused some controversy. Teddy Hall said he was initially “devastated” when his Hendrik Biebouw Auction Reserve Chenin Blanc 2010 received a score of only 85 on the 100-point scale in light of the fact that prominent [...]

As featured in the last issue of Longevity: It is easy to obsess about wine as an art form, an unconventional art form in that it has to be consumed in order to be appreciated, but an art form even so. Thus, us wine lovers will ponder the impact of factors such as climate, and [...]

As featured in the last issue of Longevity: The recommended daily allowance of alcohol is two to three units for woman and three to four units for men, a unit in the case of wine defined as 100ml (a small glass). Which isn’t very much. If we presume a couple share a bottle over a [...]