What I Drank Last Night

How would the Mulderbosch Barrel Fermented Chardonnay 2000, winner of best in class at the inaugural Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show back in 2002 being holding up? Pretty well, actually. In colour, deep yellow with a slight green tinge. Attractive development to go with citrus and baked bread. Rich and broad in structure  but fruit [...]

Last night a meeting of our social tasting group, the theme of the evening Chardonnay. Two flights, the first featuring unwooded examples, the second wooded. We tasted blind and here’s how I scored the wines using the 20-point system. Flight one 1. Domaines des Malandes Chablis 2009 16/20 2.= Domaine William Fevre Montée de Tonnerre [...]

…and the Barrel Fermented 2008 doesn’t. The way that Platter’s works is that all wines are tasted sighted (labels exposed), except for those nominated for Five Stars. Each member of the tasting team gets a random selection of new-release wines to work through and those that he or she thinks are worthy of 5 Stars [...]

This year’s Chardonnay tasting to be reported on in the November issue of WINE magazine has attracted 173 examples (28 unwooded and 145 wooded) submissions compared to 150 (19 unwooded and 131 wooded) in 2009. The panel is Carrie Adams of Johannesburg retailer Norman Goodfellows, wine writer Angela Lloyd, Woolworths wine selector Allan Mullins, JD Pretorius, [...]

Today saw a comparative tasting of Aussie vs. South African Chardonnay, 13 top examples from each country at Haskell Vineyards in Stellenbosch. Out of the 26 wines tasted, South Africa took first place, with a further seven in the top 10 – a deeply pleasing result that shows local wines can hold their own in [...]

What I really had in mind for lunch was to hook up with mates for a pie and chips and a pint or three of Guiness at Fireman’s Arms, arguably Cape Town’s best pub. However, suffering from sports fan fatigue, I’d overlooked the fact that the All Blacks would be playing the Wallabies at around [...]

The 2009 Sauvignon Blanc from Philadelphia winery rated 5 Stars in last year’s Top 10 competition run by WINE magazine, but when it emerged that the wine exceeded the maximum residual sugar of 5g/l specified as a condition of entry, the decision was taken to strip it of its rating. Why the fuss about RS? [...]

UK wine writer Andrew Jefford recently made the observation that “In wine aesthetics, nothing is more dangerous than wine tasting unsupported by corroborative drinking.” I thought of this while consuming what turned out to be a superlative bottle of Mulderbosch Barrel Femented Chardonnay 2005 with fried hake, chips and peas for Sunday lunch. Regardless of [...]