’tis the season… We’ll be closed from 25 December until 4 January 2011. Cellar Door open for tastings and sales from 5 January 2011.

We plan on having a wonderful time with our family and friends and we would like to wish each and everyone the same – have a wonderful Christmas and a great New Year! From all of us here at Sandihurst – thanks for the past and looking forward to the future!

Joshua posted this link on our facebook page and I thought it was hilarious. So many wines to choose from. So many things to consider. Can be quite complicated!

However, we encountered a great ‘culture’ whilst in the USA – and that is “sampling”. In the restaurants, customers could ask to sample wines that are available by the glass (and there are many!). The sommelier or wine waiter will happily bring 2, 3 or 4 samples and the customer can select the one he/she prefers with the food  ordered. What a great system! What a great way to discover new wines.

The day started real early and building a fire in the rain is quite depressing… However, the rain cleared up, the fire burnt nicely, the pots went onto the fire on schedule (sort of) and the people arrived en masse. Got the heating right in the winery and having limited the numbers to 120, it wasn’t as crowded as last time.

Made krummelpap (crumbed maize porridge – the African version of couscous) this time and a couple of pots of rice (emergency fall-back). A beef potjie (poi-key) and a chicken potjie as the main course and apple pie to finish off with (for those interested in matching the wines, imagine Pinot Noir, Riesling and Pinot Gris). Haven’t had any complaints nor any reports of medical emergencies so I assume all went down well. Amazed at the popularity of the krummelpap – I was nervous that being a foreign and uncommon dish (outside of Africa), uptake might have been slow. I was wrong!

Nicholas and friends performed a truly spirited rendition of African jazz and being inside an insulated but metal clad building made for very interesting accoustics! However, a fair amount of clapping and later on dancing indicated that the tunes and the rythms have an universal appeal.

The auction provided some laughs and some good natured banter and ultimately did what it was meant to do – raise money for the rescue helicopter.

We had fantastic volunteers that came to help with preparations, on the day and with the clean-up afterwards. Thanks!

And then of course each and everyone that turned up, opened their pockets and supported the Canterbury West Coast Air Rescue Trust – THANK YOU!

Great article and debate on the pricing of wine if you click here. Raises quite a few questions and the answers aren’t always that easy or clear. Ultimately, enjoying wine is a very personal, subjective and emotive issue. How to calculate the value of “I like this” versus “I like this a lot”? Unfortunately, too often it may be a case of “they like this therefore I should like it too” or worse: “it is expensive therefore I should like it a lot…”

There are a few pictures of last year’s event on the Gallery page (click here). Come and join us and let’s have fun while supporting the Air Rescue Trust. See you on Sunday!

First turn on your sound.

Talking about export and strategy and target markets, our son Sean commented: “You should go where Matt goes”. So who the heck is Matt? He doesn’t tell us, he shows us. And it is not “Who the heck is Matt”? It is “Where the hell is Matt?”

Brilliant! Hope you enjoy too!

You have to be mad (or mad about your job) to be plunging Pinot Noir very late on a Friday night. I’ve posted a few pictures on the Gallery pages (Winery and Vineyard album) showing mad people on a Friday night…

Wine Diamonds:
Have you ever come across crystals around the cork or at the bottom of the bottle when you open a bottle of wine? Were you worried that this meant the wine was flawed or ruined?

Don’t fear! This is commonly referred to as “wine diamonds” or more correctly, tartaric crystals. Finding wine diamonds is an indicator that the winemaker fermented the wine slowly and with great care , following traditional and natural wine making principles. These crystals are neither harmful nor are they a sign of poor quality – in fact, just the opposite!

Scientifically, wine diamonds occor because grapes naturally contain tartaric acid. Grapes also contain potassium and calcium ions which form salts with the organic acids. These salts can precipitate out of the wine to form a material called potassium (calcium) bitartrate or what is referred to as “wine diamonds”.

Very often  (especially in New World wine producing countries), wines undergo a process called “cold stabilisation” where the wine gets chilled down to very low temperatures for a period of time before bottling so that the crystals can ‘fall out’ in order to make the wine ‘look good’. But here’s the catch: cold stabilization has an  influence on a wine’s balance and taste.  The rapid cooling changes the wine’s structure and as a top winemaker describes it: “Cold stabilization is like tossing out the baby with the bathwater. Perhaps you are left with an aesthetically flawless wine, but you are also left with a lesser wine.”

Hans Gsellmann, head winemaker of the famous Gsellmann & Gsellmann winery in Austria, explains it this way: “It’s a natural process a wine will go through on its path to the peak of its development. When you see these flakes at the bottom of the bottle or on the cork, you can be almost certain that you are opening the wine at the right time. You should consider yourself lucky.”

Wine aficionados in the Old World are known to seek out the bottles with wine stones as a sign of quality: it shows that the wine has not been robbed of its structure through unnatural chilling, and it is a sign of a well matured wine.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stephan_Schindler

Stephan Schindler is a wine importer living in Los Angeles. You can read more of his wine writing at  http://www.winemonger.com.
Additional information sourced from: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bruno_Cantieni (Bruno Cantieni is an Independent Wine Consultant)

A much delayed report on my visit to South Africa – but better late than never. An incredible trip meeting great people and tasting fantastic wines. The idea was to meet and learn. Cobie and Bjorn came up with the idea that we do a comparative tasting with some local SA producers and things snowballed from there. The comparative tasting was done with the following wines and producers:

The Wines (Order of Tasting):
Villiera Rhine Riesling 2007 (with Jeff Grier)
Paul Cluver Weisser Riesling 2009 (with Andries Burger)
Sandihurst Canterbury Riesling 2006 (yours truly)

Then:
Antonij Rupert Terra Del Capo Pinot Grigio 2009 (with Neil Patterson)
De Grendel Pinot Gris 2009 (with Charles Hopkins)
Sandihurst Waipara Pinot Gris 2008 (yours truly)

Then:
Paul Cluver Pinot Noir 2008 (with Andries Burger)
Sandihurst Central Otago Pinot Noir 2007 (yours truly)
De Grendel ‘Op die Berg’ Pinot Noir 2006 (with Charles Hopkins)

But first, a quick rundown on the visit in total.

From the moment I landed in Cape Town, it was helter skelter from one meeting to the next. Bjorn and Cobie have arranged a mega full programme and with Rykie chipping in to take me to visit the various wineries and appointments, there was no rest for the wicked. But who needs rest…?

I saw, listened, learned and thoroughly enjoyed talking to truly fantastic winemakers who all gave generously of their time to talk to this “boerseun foreigner “ from NZ. I can go into depth here but suffice to say that I really appreciate the time each one of them gave to me. Every one of them with personalities as intriguing and interesting as the wines they produce.

I attended wine club tastings organised by Bjorn & Cobie and met some more interesting people.

And then it was the evening of the big tasting with all of the above wines and winemakers and guests at “The Only One Restaurant”. I was rather nervous I have to admit but there was no need. It was a great evening, great company, great food and of course, great wines.

I won’t go into the wines themselves in this posting otherwise it will read like a novel. What I will do is to write individually about each wine we tasted on the night to keep it short and sweet. I do have an ulterior motive though. You see, I have to refresh my memory so I’ve brought back with me a couple of bottles of each wine… Celia, Kirk and I will tackle them one by one and for the sake of our oh so difficult jobs, we will just have to taste them again in order to be able to report back.

Watch this space…