Meat and winey treats for Braaiday

British barbecues are for wimps.

Here, we wheel out our garden centre supplied, rickety barbecues at the first hint of a sunny Sunday and try to coax heat from last year's slightly damp charcoal and firelighters, before chucking on a few bangers and burgers and hoping they'll cook before it gets far too cold to hang about outside.

In South Africa they take such things far more seriously - it's all man-sized barbecues (or braais) contained in half oil drums and using actual wood, not our namby-pamby "easy light" charcoal.  Meat, meat and more meat are the main features - steaks, antelope, boerewors sausage, king-size prawns.

The idea of a British national holiday dedicated to the barbecue has the phrase monumental damp squib written all over it.  However in reliably sunny South Africa they have turned 24th September into Braaiday, when the country celebrates its love of meat cooked over open wood fires.

I had a (literal) taste of the celebration at a recent Braaiday event held by Wines of South Africa at High Timber, a London restaurant that specialises in South African food and wine.

The food was delicious and suitably meaty, though surely the portion sizes would have been dismissed as mere snacks by any red blooded male South African - but were fine by me.

A great variety of South African wines from the boutique end of the spectrum accompanied the food.  After two solid days of palate-killing judging at the International Wine Challenge prior to the dinner, I found most pleasure in the white wines on the evening.  Two standout whites for me were both blends that leaned heavily on Chenin Blanc.

Zevenwacht, The Tin Mine 2011 - £12.95 from Vagabond Wines
45% Chenin, 36% Chardonnay (I love these exact percentages) plus Viognier and Roussanne made for a vibrant, zippy mouthful of fruit and herbal flavours.













Chris Alheit Cartology 2011 - from £22 from Handford Wines, SA Wines Online (or Russian oligarchs may want to pay £49.30 for it from Hedonism)
92% Chenin and the rest is Semillon.  Where the Tin Mine lets the different varieties provide the different notes, here Chris Alheit has used Chenin parcels from four different parcels in order to give the wine its combination of flavours and aromas and it works beautifully.  There are layers of fruit, pumice and honey which whip across the palate, making for a rich and hedonistic experience, held together with a stony restraint.  Remarkable stuff.

An honourable mention must also go to:

AA Badenhorst Funky White NV - £14.50 for a half bottle from Swig
Adi Badenhorst has obviously been bitten by the natural/real/call it what you will wine movement.  This white was aged in barrel under a layer of flor (like a Fino sherry), but unfortified (like Jura's Vin Jaune).  The resulting wine has elements of both sherry and Vin Jaune - broad, tangy, apple skin flavours that linger long on the palate.

High Timber restaurant:  www.hightimber.com

 

Searching for the great white

When I first started taking an interest in wine, it was Chardonnay. Then when we’d tired of over-oaked, overdone Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio took over as the “default” white. Now you only have to look at the shelves in the off-licence or supermarket to know that Sauvignon Blanc has become our white wine of choice.

But as soon as any wine has achieved that level of popularity and ubiquity, we start to get dissatisfied with “the usual” and an itch to find the next big thing. If you get the feeling that Delboy would be ordering a glass of Sauvignon Blanc today instead of Beaujolais Nouveau in his Peckham wine bar, you know it must be time to move on.

But where next? What are the candidates for the next big white wine? Here is my shortlist for wines that could make it to the top spot.

Chenin Blanc
Chenin Blanc’s home is the mid-section of the Loire Valley in France. There they use the grape to make a huge range of wines from light, fresh sparkling Crémant, to bone dry Savennières, Vouvray and Anjou Blanc, to lusciously sweet Côteaux du Layon and Bonnezeaux. Made well, Chenin delivers plenty of round, crisp fruit, sometimes with a hint of honey on the nose, even when bone dry. It has crisp acidity, like Sauvignon Blanc, but tends to be rather more rounded in character, without the herbaceous, grassy character that marks out Sauvignon. Do beware though: Chenin Blanc needs lowish yields to show its true character and South Africa especially is guilty of producing vast quantities of cheap, dull Chenin, so it’s best to spend a little bit more than bargain basement prices.

Waitrose have La Grille Classic Barrel Fermented Chenin Blanc 2006 for £8.25, with plenty of crisp, well-defined fruit and good length. They also stock one of my favourite white wines, Domaine Huet Le Mont Sec Vouvray 2005 at £15.25. Not cheap, but a truly special wine with fantastic depth of flavour, great length, deliciously ripe but crisp fruit – it’s a certified biodynamically-produced wine too.

Riesling
Wine writers bang on about Riesling, each year predicting that this really will be when Riesling makes its comeback, which then fails to happen. Why on earth do we bother, when it seems clear that most wine drinkers just can’t take Riesling to their hearts? It’s because Riesling is such a fascinating, expressive grape that makes some fantastic wines from around the world. Part of the trouble for many drinkers is that Riesling is unfairly associated with sweet, industrially-produced German wines like Liebfraumilch – which is not even made from Riesling. However, German wines are generally perennially out of fashion, the crimplene flairs of the wine world.

So if you want to ease yourself into the world of Riesling, without fear of coming across something sweet and sickly, I’d head for Australia, which is making some truly exciting and always dry Rieslings. Try O’Leary Walker Polish Hill River Riesling 2007, £8.99 at Waitrose for a taste of this deliciously crisp, racy grape. Majestic have Paulett’s Riesling 2006, Polish Hill River (obviously a hot spot for Riesling) for £9.99, or £8.49 if you buy 2 bottles. Thresher/Wine Rack have the 2006 Leasingham Magnus Riesling from the Clare Valley for £8.99 or £5.99 at the 3 for 2 price, which is textbook Aussie Riesling: crisp, waxy and limey.

Viognier
Viognier is definitely becoming steadily more fashionable, going from a little-known variety found only in a tiny part of France’s Rhône Valley, to an international grape grown in Chile, Australia, New Zealand – as well as in large swathes of the south of France. In contrast to Chenin and Riesling, Viognier is not characterised by crisp acidity: indeed it can be rather “fat”, even flabby, if not treated carefully in the vineyard. But Viognier’s trump card is its delicious peach/apricot fruit character, sometimes with a little spice. Perhaps the pinnacle of Viognier is its original home in the tiny appellation of Condrieu in the Northern Rhône: Chapoutier’s Condrieu “Invitare” 2006 can show you what all the fuss is about, but it will set you back £25 at Majestic. For more everyday enjoyment try Waitrose’s d’Arenberg The Hermit Crab Viognier/Marsanne 2007 for £8.99, hailing from McLaren Vale in Australia, or Sainsbury’s Stamford Brook Viognier 2007 from South East Australia at £5.99.

So will it be one of these three that will ultimately triumph? I’ll let you know in about five years’ time.