Perswijn - Veertien geslaagden voor Diploma Course

Perswijn - Veertien geslaagden voor Diploma Course

South Africa

No, I did not visit Fairview, producer of these 'goaty' wines I saw at the airport going home. We did meet one of their sales reps, though, in the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. The wine we had with our fish there was a Riesling. De Wetshof in Robertson made the second and last Riesling I tasted in South Africa.

In a week and a half I visited some 10 wineries, from Bergkelder/Fleur du Cap, Beyerskloof, Reyneke and Stark-Condé in Stellenbosch, to Constantia-Uitsig in Constantia. In between I also visited wineries in the Franchhhoek (Boekenhoutskloof), Elgin/Botsrivier (Paul Cluver, Barton, Gabriëlskloof), Robertson (Springfield, Arendsig), Malmesbury (Sadie Family Vineyards) and Somerset-West (Waterkloof, Vergelegen) areas.



In general, I was more impressed by the whites than the reds. The three different sauvignon blancs at Waterkloof, e.g., or the 5 chardonnays (oaked and non-oaked) at De Wetshof. Cabernet sauvignons tasted were often very typical, i.e. (for me) bellpepper and leafy , Vergelegen being the exception. Barton was the discovery of the trip; this winery is young, relatively unknown but produced good to very interesting wines (chenin, sauvignon blanc, shiraz/cab sauv, sémillon).

At Reyneke I felt for maybe the first time I really understood the philosophy behind bio-dynamic viticulture. The wines were OK, too.

AIWS!

I just got a call from our course leader to inform me of my pass grade for the Unit 1 Case Study. As this was my last exam, I have now completed the Diploma in Wine & Spirits. The champagne (De Sousa) is chilling in the fridge; will drink it tonight with Geoff, who passed Intermediate last week, with distinction!

Ahr revisited

The Brabantse Wijnsocieteit (www.brabantsewijnsocieteit.blogspot.com) 30 year anniversary trip to the Mosel & Ahr areas is coming along nicely. We will visit (thanks to Armando Duijnhoven, duijnhoven.eu) Van Volxem in the Mosel (Saar) area and Kreuzberg and Deutzerhof in the Ahr. Still looking for one last visit in the Mosel area.

(Another) one down, one to go

I passed Unit 5 (Sparkling Wine) of the Diploma Course. This means only the Unit 1 case study to go, in March. The end is near ...

The next few months will be busy from the wine point of view: I will have to split my spare time between organizing a group wine trip to the Ahr and Mosel areas of Germany, and preparing this hopefully last exam - you get the overall subject of this closed book essay exam some 2,3 weeks before the actual exam, so you can prepare without knowing the exact question that will be asked in the exam. I'm curious what the subject will be, guess we'll know in a few weeks.