What’s on: the Wacky Wine Weekend
Posted on 03. Jun, 2011 by Christine Lundy in People & Places
Don’t have plans this weekend? Lucky you. Now you do… Head out to the largest regional wine festival in South Africa, the Wacky Wine Weekend in the Robertson Valley for some wining, dining and a whole lot of unpretentious fun. This year is the eighth anniversary of the wine festival – over 16,000 visitors are [...]
Hartenberg’s harvest
Posted on 31. Mar, 2011 by Lisa in People & Places
Wine farming is not as glamorous as it looks. In fact, at this time of year there are an awful lot of exhausted wine farmers out there. Why? It’s harvest time. We headed to Hartenberg, a stunning wine farm in the heart of the Stellenbosch winelands, to find out just how much hard work goes into [...]
Blow the trumpet for Sauvignon Blanc
Posted on 18. Feb, 2011 by Christine Lundy in Food & Drink
Looking for some weekend inspiration? Does sipping fine wines, tasting delectable canapés in the surrounds of a top-notch wine estate sound like fun? The Constantia Fresh Festival will be held on 25th and 26th February 2011 in Cape Town. Over these two days the trumpet will be blown for Sauvignon Blanc and the white blends [...]
Wine Evaluation Course Giveaway
Posted on 18. Jan, 2011 by Marina in Food & Drink
Heard of GetSmarter? They offer specialist training online. Now there’s an idea. This firecracker company is the leader in its field and the first and only entirely online entity to gain SETA accreditation. In a nutshell, they partner with top universities and industry experts to offer South Africans long distance professional short courses online. A quick scan of [...]
A Wine Recital
Posted on 13. Dec, 2010 by Christine Lundy in People & Places
Who would have thought that playing music to a wine could improve its taste? This is an experiment that Flagstone’s Bruce Jack has conducted on some of his wines to measure the impact of music on taste buds. He presented a wine, some samples serenaded in the barrel and some un-serenaded, to groups of tasters. [...]
Raise your glass
Posted on 06. Dec, 2010 by Marina in Kitchen Gear
Did you know, the glass you drink out of profoundly effects your experience? For a long time, us humans were none the wiser. Welcome to the story of how the functional wine glass came to be. Glass making in Europe began in about 1000 AD when the Venetians returned home from the Near East with knowledge [...]
Hello, Christine Lundy
Posted on 03. Dec, 2010 by Marina in People & Places
World, meet Christine Lundy. She’s on a journey with the fruit-of-the-vine and is going to be writing some posts for Spatula. She’s french, and we’re excited. We asked her a couple of snoopy questions to get us up to speed on the life of a Parisian wine writer living in Mzanzi. How did the love [...]
Eco Wine tour
Posted on 21. Oct, 2010 by Marina in People & Places
Wine making is steeped in tradition, and there is an unsurprising debate around the introduction of ‘green’ techniques into the industry. Backsberg has been in the news recently (and on CNN) for their PET plastic wine bottles, slated by some and lauded by others. We think they’re neat. While some folk criticise attempts to eco-friendlify [...]
Backsberg treads lightly
Posted on 03. Aug, 2010 by Marina in People & Places
About a month ago, we headed out into the Winelands on an adventure, and visited Backsberg Wine Estate. Estate owner Micheal Back explains a bit of the history: “Our family history in South Africa starts back at the beginning of the last century, when my grandfather arrived at the shores of Cape Town, as a [...]
R100 voucher for GETWINE.co.za
Posted on 14. Jul, 2010 by Marina in Yuppiechef Diary
We’ve made friends with the guys at GETWINE.co.za – an online store (just like us, woop!) selling quality South African wines at phenomenal prices, and they’re offering Yuppiechef fans R100 off orders placed for the next month until 14 August 2010. GETWINE is based in Cape Town and are big on customer service, speedy shipping [...]
