Taste your way around the world with Durbanville Hills

by Karisa

Last week I joined the lovely folks from Durbanville Hills Wines for the kick-off of their 8 week “Taste your way around the world” series.

The series kicked off with France and will now take place every Wednesday evening, focusing on a different country/region/continent each week.  The idea for this series was inspired by cellar master Martin Moore’s love for travel.  You’ll find him regularly hosting tastings as well as food & wine pairings abroad, and so they figured that it was time to bring some international flavour over to Cape Town as well.

These themed evenings will be led by Martin, red winemaker Wilhelm Coetzee or white winemaker Gunther Kellerman (both avid cooks too) and will concentrate on the unique culture as well as the food and wine from various countries around the world.

This was actually my first ever visit to Durbanville Hills and I have to say it’s really beautiful there…

Their tasting room is elegant and inviting and they boast some of the best views in town thanks to their location all the way up at the top of the hills of Durbanville…

Now each week there will be different activities.  One week you could find yourself tasting the best New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs, and the next you could be  pairing Spanish tapas with the wines from Spain.

For our French evening, we were split into teams and given the task of blending our own Bordeaux wine.  Things got quite technical with our team playing around with various small blending tweaks to get ours just right… And of course, the competition was fierce…  There was a wine prize for the winning team, but bragging rights was the thing I think we all really wanted.

We learnt a lot of cool French facts, we did a little French wine tasting, sampled some French snacks, and then got down to the task of blending that Bordeaux (which is a blend of 5 different varietals)…

It took some careful planning and some good teamwork, but we finally settled on a blend we decided to call “Bordeaux You Didn’t” (you have to say it with some finger snapping, then you’ll get it)

Once our blend was complete, we submitted a glass for tasting & scoring and then got to blend a big batch so we could each take our own bottle home. I really just wanted to take home one of those BIIIG bottles we used to mix our final batch, but was very chuffed with my beautiful bottle of red (which totally should have won, but didn’t.  Clearly there must have been some kind of scoring error and I would’ve demanded a recount if they hadn’t distracted us with dinner)

Dinner took place in their beautiful restaurant upstairs.  The menu was of course French inspired with a French beef dish as well as a French chicken dish, paired with freshly baked French loaves and some really tasty accompaniments like a hot French mustard the chef specially prepared for us:

We drank, we learnt, we ate and we became winemakers.  I think that makes for a successful evening…  Now, do you wanna join them for the next one?  This is what the schedule looks like:

  • 23 July:  New Zealand
  • 30 July:  Peru
  • 6 August:  Spain
  • 13 August:  Asia
  • 20 August:  South Africa
  • 27 August:  Middle East
  • 3 September:  United States

The arrival time is: 18.30 for 19.00, and the venue is of course Durbanville Hills Wines.

The cost is R280 per person and this includes a welcome drink, dinner, wine tasting, coffee and a sweet treat.  Durbanville Hills’ wines is also on sale throughout the evening.

Booking is essential though, so do contact:

  • Simone Brown
  • 021 558 1300
  • sibrown@durbanvillehills.co.za

A big thanks to Durbanville Hills for letting me crash their first one.  I had a lot of fun.  And I’m going to treasure my bottle of Bordeaux for a special occasion (which back at mine doesn’t really mean much, I might just end up polishing it off while watching the finale of The Bachelor, but that bottle WILL be loved, that’s for sure).

xxx

2 comments

Martina Jul 21, 2014 - 10:24 am

This Looks really cool

My boyfriend and I are visiting Cape Town from September 1st till September 15th so the last dinner would be perfect. Thank’s for the share.
🙂

Reply
Karisa Jul 21, 2014 - 10:40 am

Awesome! Hope you guys enjoy your time in Cape Town. 🙂

Reply

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