Category Archives: Glen Carlou

Celebrations: Chicken Tagine and Birthdays!

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Even before I left for South Africa, my friends Stevie, Alexxa, and I had been trying to get together for a dinner to celebrate our birthdays, which all fell within weeks of one another. This past Thursday, we were finally able to make it happen. We gathered at my house to cook and drink wine. Not a bad way to celebrate for three food-lovers.

 The lovely ladies
We’d decided to make an impromptu chicken tagine – Alexxa found an easy-to-execute recipe that used a lot of the ingredients that we already had lying around in our kitchens. She went to pick up three thighs at the Meat Hook, as well as some ginger and onion. Chez moi, we browned the chicken in my clay pot (thanks to my brother’s lovely Christmas present, I knew that clay was necessary for emparting a few key characteristics to the slow-cooked flavor of the dish), then removed the meat from the heat. We then threw in some white onion and garlic and let them simmer until soft. Then we added the spices – cumin, curry, coriander, cinnamon and shredded garlic – letting them coat the vegetables. In went chopped pineapple, which I had lying around the house. Next, San Marzano tomatoes and chick peas went into the pot, along with some homemade chicken stock. Finally, we added the chicken back to the dish and some farro and let everything meld together over medium heat for about a half hour.
Stevie and I had each paired a wine with the meal. She had brought a 2008 Kabinett riesling from Schloss Lieser, inspired by Eric Asimov’s recent article on the vintage.

Schloss Lieser, available at Crush Wine & Spirits :)
 

I served up a Glen Carlou 2006 Grand Classique, a Bordeaux blend from South Africa, gifted to me upon my visit to the winery last week!

 At Glen Carlou
 The 2006 Grand Classique, the winery’s flagship wine, 
a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Malbec, and Cab Franc.

The riesling was a lovely wine leading up to the meal – easy drinking, light, a bit of acidity, and the aromas of the wine blended nicely with those coming from the pot on the stove. However, with the tagine, which we served with preserved lemon and parsley, the Carlou won hands down. The meat-y quality of the wine, which opened up into a smooth, almost chocolate-y dish of itself, was the perfect complement to the protein-and-fruit-heavy tagine.

The final dish

Happy birthday ladies!


South Africa: Wine & History

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I am gearing up for a trip to South Africa at the beginning of April to celebrate my birthday – I bought the ticket months ago and have slowly been setting up my itinerary. Everyone keeps asking me if I am planning to go on a safari and visit the lions. The answer is no. This is a wine trip.

Thus far, I am planning to spend a few days in Cape Town, hoping to wander the town, stumble upon good food, hike Table Mountain, and potentially drive down to the Cape of Good Hope to see penguins. Then, I am driving to Paarl to spend a few days visiting Backsberg, Glen Carlou, and a few others.

Paarl
Then, on my birthday, I leave the solo life behind and fly to Durban to visit a good friend of mine from college, Cheryl, who moved back this past year. That part of the trip-planning I’ve left up to her :)
 see left. ignore my outfit.

I have been brushing up on my South African history, particularly as related to the wine industry, and I thought I’d share a few interesting nugglets of information here. If you are a history buff, keep reading.

1652 – the Dutch arrive at the Cape of Good Hope and set up an outpost on the Europe-India trade route

1659 – the first grapes on record are pressed

1679 – Simon van der Stel arrives and imposes the first wine-making regulations

1685 – van der Stel acquires Constantia, South Africa’s first internationally renowned winery, producing wines that were highly favored in the courts of Europe (Vin de Costance was Napoleon’s favorite wine)

 

1688-90 – After fleeing Europe, 200 French Huguenots establish Franschoek (the French corner, in Dutch), another wine-growing area in the Western Cape

throughout much of the 18th and early 19th c – SA establishes itself as a leading exporter of port- and sherry-style fortified wines, especially benefitting from Napoleon’s Continental System, which blockaded the British

post-Napoleon – sale crisis due to the low quality of wine, whose high yields and overproduction could not compete with the leading wines of Europe

late 19th c – phylloxera and mildew epidemics reach SA and ravage vineyards

the phylloxera louse

start of the 20th c – export trade market dries up, further decreasing production

1918 – Koöperatieve Wijnbouwers Vereniging, a winemakers’ cooperative, was founded to begin establishing wine controls

1924 – KWV given legal authority to fix the price of wine used to make brandy

1925 – the Pinotage grape was created by crossing Pinot Noir and Cinsault (known as Hermitage in SA) by viticulturalist Abraham Izak Perold

1940 – SA government fully transferred the supervision of the wine sector to the KWV, allowing it to determine wine prices, permissable yields, varieties, planting rights, and production methods, as well as to control the surpluses

1948 – apartheid established in SA

1959 – first call to boycott South African goods, including wine exports, as a response to apartheid

1980s – boycott fully established internationally

1992 – KWV quota system abandoned, granting winemakers greater creativity and flexibility to create quality wines of various depth and complexities

1994 – apartheid officially ends with the multi-racial democratic elections won by the African National Congress under Nelson Mandela

Mandela wins!

1994-now – huge increase in international demand for SA wines, as an affordable, quality commodity; this is reflected in the increased plantings of international varietals throughout the winegrowing regions of the Western Cape

More South Africa-oriented info hopefully to come over the next few weeks. Test on Tuesday.

Sources: Andre Domine’s WINE; wikipedia; and various (see links)