By Olivier Gasselin
Noordhoek Beach
We’re excited to publish a series of extracts from Olivier’s wine rambling in South Africa. It’s now wedding time! Olivier is the Head Sommelier at the Bluebird in Chelsea.
We left Hermanus with great regret, but also very expectant as we were meant to join our great friends Kalin and Aaron, who were getting married on …
By Olivier Gasselin
View of Walker Bay from Hamilton Russell’s property
We’re excited to publish a series of extracts from Olivier’s wine rambling in South Africa. This time he visits Hermanus. Olivier is the Head Sommelier at the Bluebird in Chelsea.
We are still in Hermanus and our next mission: to visit Anthony Hamilton Russell. I have …
By Olivier Gasselin
Barto's vineyards
We’re excited to publish a series of extracts from Olivier’s wine rambling in South Africa. This time he visits Franschhoek & Hermanus. Olivier is the Head Sommelier at the Bluebird in Chelsea.
Next destination: Franschhoek (the French Quarter in Afrikaan). This is where French protestant immigrants arrived after leaving their country during the religious war.
Our first stop was …
By Callie Coetzee, Viticulturist at SAAM
Growing conditions
We had a great winter with an above average rainfall in our area. The rain came almost every second week and continued until the middle of November 2009.
From the middle of November until we started to harvest, we had little or no rain. These conditions are great for healthy ripening of our grapes.
Our harvest started …
By Rebecca Gibb, http://www.rebeccagibb.com/
Vineyards looking over Cape Town
South Africa is now selling more wine in the UK than France. You would have got very long odds for that happening if you’d placed a bet 15 years ago.
The latest Nielsen stats put three New World countries on the UK’s best-selling rostrum: Australia, the US (well, California) …
By Olivier Gasselin
View from Graceland
We are happy to publish a series of extracts from Olivier’s wine rambling in South Africa. This time he visits Stellenbosch. …
By Olivier Gasselin
Klein Constantia Estate
We are happy to publish a series of extracts from Olivier Gasselin’s wine travels across south Africa. Olivier is currently the Head Sommelier at the Blue Bird in Chelsea.
After almost 3 years of service at Le Pont de la Tour restaurant in central London, I thought the moment was right for me to leave. I was …
By Aurore de Tapol
Last night I was at the Ubuhle Beads Exhibition in Highgate, sponsored by SAAM Mountain.
Ubuhle means “beautiful” in Zulu and this charity was established in 2000 with the objective to create an African Design Village at Little Farm in Kwazulu-Natal.
It all started when Ntombephi Ntombela was doing beadwork which was being sold on the Durban beach front. Soon, Ntombephi and her friend Bev …
Bill Nanson’s Burgundy Report is required reading for any fine wine lover and his Big Red Diary blog is one that I check every day too. This week Bill included a piece that he had spotted on JF Mugnier’s website (I love the way information spreads online) about a new bio-insecticide. It’s pretty funny:
(credits to www.burgundy-report.com & www.mugnier.fr)
Hmmm… bio-insecticides.
One of the less …
By Simon Farr
It really is just so much more convenient taking a light plane to get from Agulhus (the actual Southern most point in Africa) to Malagas the lonely outpost at the end of the Breede River that is the home of Sijnn’s Vineyard. There is a road, well not a real one that you or I would recognise, but rather a series of dirt …
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