MasterChef SA Top 5
finalist Lungile Nhlanha will be joining Wim Truter of Nederburg’s
award-winning winemaking team to co-present a fun and interactive
experience at the upcoming Soweto Wine Festival that runs
from September 6 to 8.
The two taste talents are teaming up for the Nederburg Taste
Theatre to let you in on a few simple but very effective
tips for making the most of pairing wine with food. Lungile,
now a part of DRUM’s food team and Wim, who trained
in France and South Africa and makes Nederburg’s delicious
white wines, will highlight how the five basic flavours
- sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami (a Japanese
term to describe a flavour that is intensely savoury) impact
on wine and food matching.
The purpose of the Nederburg Taste Theatre is to give people
the opportunity to taste a selection of wines and foods
together to see what happens. “As with any match in
life,” says Nederburg spokesperson Wencke Grobler,
“the ‘chemistry’ must be right. You have
to have compatibility. So often you can taste a wine with
a food that is not ideal and the result can lessen your
enjoyment of both. It doesn’t have to be that way
once you are exposed to some very easy guidelines that are
more about common sense than anything else.
“The idea is to experience how something that seems
as insignificant as a squeeze of lemon or a little extra
salt added to your food can make a substantial difference
to the way you experience an accompanying wine. We want
wine lovers to free themselves from the burdens of do’s
and don’ts involved with wine and food matching. Instead,
we demonstrate how you can enrich the pleasure of the wine
you drink by offering you the experience of combining it
in a way that brings compatible flavours together.”
She says popular red, white and dessert wines from the Nederburg
range will be lined up in the Taste Theatre for visitors
to combine with the tastes of, for instance, gherkins, nougat,
cashew nuts, olives and soy sauce.
Meanwhile, Wellington Metshane, a senior member of the team
making Nederburg reds, will be on hand to introduce visitors
to the festival to some exciting new offerings at the winery’s
exhibition stand.
The Taste Theatre is open to festival goers on a first-come
first-served basis and can accommodate up to 48 people at
each session. On Thursday, September 6, and Friday, September
7, there will be three sessions each, at 19:00, 20:00 and
21:00. On Saturday, September 8, there will be three sessions,
at 18:00, 19:00 and 20:00.
Nederburg has the highest number of five-star rated wines
in the 2012 Platter’s South African Wine Guide, a
distinction it shares with two other wineries. In 2011,
Nederburg was the Platter’s Winery of the Year. Last
year, a Nederburg wine achieved the highest score on the
inaugural Five Nations Wine Challenge, involving South Africa,
Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Argentina.
Tickets at R120 a head can be booked through WEBTICKETS,
from Cape Wine Academy, Morara Wine Emporium and the Soweto
Hotel. For more details, go to www.sowetowinefestival.co.za
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