What I Drank Last Night

Below is a list of my 10 best wines for 2010. 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 that I think show the way forward. Beaumont Hope Marguerite Chenin Blanc 2009 [...]

Results of the second annual Nedbank Green Wine Awards were announced today. The competition consists of two parts, namely best wines from organically grown grapes and best environmental practices. Best Wines from Organically Grown Grapes Best White, Best Overall Reyneke Woolworths “W” Chenin Blanc 2009 Best Red Reyneke Reserve Red 2007 Best Sweet Stellar Heaven [...]

Both the 2009 and 2010 vintages of Graham Beck Pheasants’ Run were among the 2010 Wine magazine Sauvingon Blanc Top 10. This continues the remarkable run of success that this wine has enjoyed in this competition since it was started four years ago its record to date as follows: 2007: 2007 in the Top 10, [...]

Results of the fourth annual Wine magazine Sauvignon Blanc Top 10 were announced today. These were as follows (performance at Veritas in brackets for interest’s sake): FIVE STARS Anura Unfiltered Reserve 2010 (Double Gold, Veritas 2010) FOUR AND A HALF STARS Cederberg 2010 (Silver, Veritas 2010) De Grendel Koetshuis 2010 (Double Gold, Veritas 2010) First [...]

The Graham Beck Pheasants’ Run Sauvignon Blanc 2008 was among the winners of the 2008 Sauvignon Blanc Top 10 as convened by WINE magazine rating 4 Stars, and then remarkably was the only example of its vintage among the 2009 winners with a rating of 4½ Stars, the rest all being from 2009 itself Clearly, [...]

The MCC Technical Seminar was held yesterday at the Graham and Rhona Beck Skills Centre, proceedings culminating in a tutored tasting of Champagne Mailly Grand Cru by chef de cave Hervé Dantan. The Mailly vineyards are situated around the village of Mailly Champagne, one of only 17 villages to hold the highest classification Grand Cru [...]

Friday saw 11 older Cape Winemakers Guild Auction Wines presented at Jordan Winery Restaurant in Stellenbosch. It was to be an investigation of the age-worthiness of South African wine, a topic that attracts its fair share of controversy. I am inclined to think that when it comes to modern South African reds in particular, these [...]

Yesterday, I undertook the always interesting exercise of comparing the effect of different dosages on a bubbly that’s about to be finally bottled. My parents-in-law Naas and Jenny Ferreira own Klein Optenhorst, a property in the Bovlei valley of Wellington where they have created an internationally renowned garden, open to the public in October each [...]