Portly figures

The Runner drove me to drink.  Again.  This time all the way to the Calitzdorp Po#$ ⁽¹⁾ Festival.  Along the way we picked up a cash flow saving device called Beckey.  If it wasn’t for her luggage filling the boot I would have felt obliged to fill it with port ⁽²⁾.  Join me for a two part story containing quaint towns, port for dinner, dodgy towns, port for lunch, the Paris Hilton of the Klein Karoo and port for breakfast.  Twice.

It was a multipurpose trip pivoting around the port festival.   Getting there involved a Route 62 road trip.  As a side bar I went chorizo hunting.  We hanged out with Beckey, an old friend of The Runner.  And by old I mean long time.  Erhm, for the sake of my life expectancy let’s call it a medium term friend both not been alive long enough to have long term friendships.  And on the extreme speculative side, we prospected for future father in laws.  In an independent and unscientific test two out of two South African women rated the winemaker at De Krans as better looking than James Dean.  To be fair, since his death James has been rather less of a catch.  

Part 1, this part, the focus is on port.  That lovely sweetish wine fortified with spirit from grapes.  Unaged brandy.  Witblits if you want. 

Upon our arrival in Calitzdorp we thought our stay was in the dodgy part of town until we realised that the dodgy part of this town is the entire town.  It also turned out that the dodgy was only in our heads. 

Port

Junel Vermeulen: My port teacher

Named for the town of Oporto in Portugal.  The harbour town at the seaward side of the Douro river.  They make wine and before fermentation is complete add alcohol to kill the yeast, thus stopping fermentation and preserving some sweetness and increase the alcohol level at the same time.  Still wines normally have 11-15% of alcohol content whilst in port this goes up to 16-20%.  The different styles of port have a lot to do with the ageing regime.  Ruby is young, fresh and meant to drink when you buy it.  Tawny ports spend 8 years or longer in barrels and it too, is ready to drink when you buy it.  Vintage spend only 2 years in the barrel and are meant to age in bottles like its superior sibling Vintage Reserve.  Late Bottled Vintage was meant to be vintage, but did not quite make the grade and therefore hanged out in the barrel a little longer.  This too can be readily opened on purchase.  Unless it is a gift.  Wait until the giving is finished before opening.  

Breakfast one

Port and chocolates

It may not be the breakfast of champions, but port and chocolates comes a close second.  And not kit kats and cabernet ⁽³⁾, but bespoke pairings.  Presented by a delightful double act of Junel Vermeulen (the wine bit) and Marita Lamprecht (the chocolate bit) I recommend you go if you have a chance. 

Ms Lamprecht made a piece of chocolate specifically for each wine.  No hit or miss here.  Deliberate manufacturing to best showcase both the wine and the chocolate.  The pairings are given below.  Due to my lack of chocolate knowledge I focused mostly on the extra flavour elements included in the mix.  All the chocolate components were very good, beautifully made.

1. Peter Bayly white paired with almond tuilles white chocolate.
2. Duswaroo Quintette rouge with pate de fruit.  Fruity jelly embraced in chocolate.
3. Boplaas Touriga Nacional  with a nutmeg covered jobby.  Chocolate on the inside this time.
4. Grundheim Withond (unaged brandy) with a grape, macerated in witblits, covered with chocolate.
5. Axe Hill Ruby with a lavender creamy milk and dark chocolate mix
6. Calitzdorp Vintage with apricot masala.  A very good match.
7. De Krans Tawny with an amaretto marzipan and some white chocolate
8. De Krans Vintage Reserve with coriander and cherry tobacco.

I liked the masala one best as a chocolate and it made a good pairing.  A pairing I didn’t expect to work so well was the cherry tobacco chocolate with Vintage reserve.  The closest I’ve come to tobacco is second hand smoke.  Yet this worked very well.

Port and cheese

Jo and Brian in their shop

Presented by Brian Dick and Junel Vermeulen and our second port breakfast.  Ms Vermeulen apparently discovered the local hangout and had the sort of night out that had people phoning her at 6 am to ask if she remembers how to shower.  A very a good night then.  So starting a trifle slower than the chocolate event, but she soon hit her strides and was extremely infotaining. Mr Dick has a cheese shop in Linden, Johannesburg that sells not only cheese, but also olives, jams and cured meats.  great classic picnic food.

If you see this sign, stop and enter

Brian taught us the cheese appreciation scale.  If it is OK then m.  Better is mm.  Excellent is mmm.   On the negative side you have gp ⁽⁴⁾   

The matches are given below.

Breakfast two

1. Goat Peter  - Grison with Peter Bayly white
2. Buffalo Ridge – Mozzarella di Bufala  with De Krans Pink Port.  On its own mozzarella taste a bit like rubber to me.  Here we were exposed to the idea as the cheese as base to absorb flavours.  Particularly dunking it in Pink Port.
3. Dalewood – Camembert with Boplaas Touriga Nacional 2009
4. Beaconsfield – Sheep fresh Pecorino with Axe Hill Machado 2011
5. Van der Poel – Cumin Boerekaas with Calitzdorp Cellars Ruby
6. Healey’s -  Cheddar With Boplaas Tawny
7. Klein River – Gruyere with DuSwaRoo Vintage 2009
8. Cremelat – Gorgonzola with De Krans Vintage Reserve 2009.  This the classic port and Stilton

For me the best matches were the last three and the 1^st one.  Apparently in many of these kinds of pairings the first ones are rated best.  Perhaps because the palate is freshest then or we get confused after a while.  With the intake of alcohol the latter stages should also do well.  Besides that, I like hard cheeses.  The type that retains their shape when cut.  The type that stays in one place on the plate.  Therefore my liking the cheddar and Gruyere is not unusual, but the blue cheese surprised me.  I know it is a classic match, but having read some “classic” books sometime classic means “I suffered through this, therefore you can too.”

Tappas lunch

A light lunch of tappas and Calitzdorp wines.   

This time deliberately not port.The idea in a Calitzdorp blend is that it should contain some Portugese varietals.  The tappas, made by Silver Orange Bistro chef Leon Nel, were selected to pair with each wine. 

1. On the left an ostrich samoosa with cranberry sauce paired with Peter Bayly III 2011 Blend of Touriga Naçional, Tinta Barocca and Souzão. 
2. Port poached pear with cinnamon, gorgonzola and fig jam. The wine was Boplaas Tinta Chocolat 2012 made from Tinta Barocca.
3. Springbok Carpaccio with parmesan and something illegible (in my notes only) made especially for the Axe Hill Machado (Axe in Portugese) 2012 also made from Touriga Naçional, Tinta Barroca and Souzão and a dash of Shiraz.
4. Malay Lamb in conjunction with De Krans Touriga Naçional 2010.  This for me was better matched with Boplaas Tinta Chocolat.
5. Camembert in phyllo pastry some nuts ⁽⁵⁾ was best eaten with the Boplaas Ring of Rocks 2011.  The wine a three way equal blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Touriga Naçional

 When we started out Beckey wasn't really into wine, but a prolonged battering of taste buds throughout the weekend started to convert her.  In the end some bottles did travel back to Mpumalanga.

A late update.  I feel like Dr Frankenstein.  The little Monster we created is all grown up.  All Beckey's port are gone. In the coal belt did she find happiness at the bottom of a bottle like I do?

(1)    We are not allowed to call port anymore.

(2)    Stuff it, I still can.

(3)    A Junel Vermeulen joke.

(4)    Pronounced ggg-pppp.  Hard g.  Hard p.

(5)    You can tell by now it was a long weekend and my note taking suffered as a result.