First Cape Winemakers Guild Woman Protégé starts her career in winemaking

First Cape Winemakers Guild Woman Protégé starts her career in winemaking.

South African Wine | wine news | A Royal affair with the “Sport of Kings”

South African Wine | wine news | A Royal affair with the “Sport of Kings”.

South African Wine | wine news | Riffels, not Riedels, for an Age of Austerity

South African Wine | wine news | Riffels, not Riedels, for an Age of Austerity.

South African Wine | wine news | My Year of Food and Drink

South African Wine | wine news | My Year of Food and Drink.

South African Wine | wine news | Amorim helps preserve 200 year old champagne

South African Wine | wine news | Amorim helps preserve 200 year old champagne.

Magic of Bubbles in Franschhoek

Be sure not to miss this year’s The Franschhoek ‘Magic of Bubbles’ Cap Classique and Champagne Festival, taking place over the weekend of the 3rd to 5th of December, and for the fifth year running, this social calendar highlight is sponsored by Investec Private Bank. Proving to be the ideal host for this festival, the largest of its kind in the country allowing visitors the opportunity to sample both Champagne and Cap Classique wines, Franschhoek offers visitors a unique combination of French heritage and South African winelands.

Festival times

Friday 3 December 2010: 6pm to 10pm
Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th December 2010: 12pm to 6pm

Bookings

R 180 per day. Book tickets online through http://www.webtickets.co.za.

Theme

Dress up according to our theme “White and Black” and stand a chance of winning great prizes.

Value-added Festival packages

To afford visitors a complete Franschhoek experience, accommodation establishments are making available tailor made festival packages, offering you ample time to not only attend the festival, but take in other sights.

Offers include reduced rates, festival tickets and sumptuous breakfasts for the duration of your stay.

Click here to access these special offerings.

Read more about the exhibitors and the programme here.

South African Wine | wine news | How the Nedbank award was won; the greening of Graham Beck Wines

South African Wine | wine news | How the Nedbank award was won; the greening of Graham Beck Wines.

South African Wine | wine news | Steenberg Vineyards ends 2010 on a high note

South African Wine | wine news | Steenberg Vineyards ends 2010 on a high note.

Doing Lip Service

To join go to :
http://za.movember.com/

Welcome to Movember South Africa, 2010

Movember (the month formerly known as November), the month long moustache growing charity event held each year to help raise funds and awareness for men’s health is officially in South Africa.

Having started in Australia seven years ago, Movember has grown to be an international event, taking place in six countries. This global expansion looks set to continue with demand from Mo Bros and Sistas around the world wanting to grow moustaches and celebrate Movember in their own countries. As a direct result, six new countries have been added to this year’s campaign, of which South Africa is one!

Movember is about bringing back the moustache for a serious cause and sees Mo Bros, supported by the Mo Sistas in their life, register at Movember.com and then start Movember 1st with a clean-shaven face. They have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their moustache, whilst raising funds and awareness.

South African Mo Bros and Sistas can join their 250 000 registered Global counterparts by donating their faces and growing their Mo’s in aid of the Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA) and their message of detecting Men’s Cancers early.

The 2009 Movember campaign enjoyed over R 240 000 raised and over 1 500 registered South African Mo Bros & Sistas – all funds were allocated to CANSA’s Men’s Health Programs, which includes CANSA Interim homes (Hope Lodges) Awareness and Early detection Programs.

All men should invest in their health by learning how to detect men’s cancers early – The Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA) encourages men to be proactive by regular self-examination and having Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) blood tests.

Men from age 15 to 40 years of age need to examine their testicles each month, preferably after a bath or shower, to feel for any pea-sized lumps that could indicate testicular cancer. Men over the age of 50 need to go for simple screening tests each year to check if they might have prostate cancer, which is the most common cancer among men in South Africa and globally. The lifetime risk for men developing prostate cancer in South Africa is one in 23.

CANSA’s purpose is to lead the fight against cancer in South Africa to save lives.

Help fight cancer by supporting Movember and grow your Mo to spread the message to detect men’s cancers early. Become a Citizen of Movember by registering under South Africa (including Mo Bros who had already registered in 2009), and raise funds by submitting your email address, downloading a donation form and get ready to grow your finest South African Mo! Or, why not get a team together in your workplace, sporting club or friends and compete for the finest Mo and most funds raised?

Follow us on Facebook under MovemberSouthAfrica and MovemberSA on Twitter to keep up to date with the campaign locally.

Nedbank Green Wine Award Winners Announced

Posted on http://wine.co.za/news/news.aspx?NEWSID=16837&Source=News
on 19 November 2010 by Nedbank Green Wine Awards

Reyneke, South Africa’s first biodynamic vineyard and winery, and Graham Beck Wines were the big winners at the Nedbank Green Wine Awards held in Cape Town today.
The awards – held in association with Wine magazine – promote environmentally friendly wines and are given in two categories – for the Best Organic Wine as well as the Best Environmental Practice Award. Following international trends, more South African consumers are trying organic wines for both health reasons and because it makes sense to support wineries that farm sustainably for the benefit of future generations and vineyard productivity.

The Reyneke Woolworths Chenin Blanc 2009 was voted the Best Organic Wine. It also won in the best white wine category, while the Reyneke Reserve Red 2007 was tops in the best red wine category. The best natural sweet award went to the Stellar Heaven on Earth Natural Sweet. The Best Environmental Practice Award went to Graham Beck Wines, while the runner up was Paul Cluver.

The Reyneke label was created in 1998 when Johan Reyneke took over the farming activities from his mother and produced the first wines on the family farm, Uitzicht near Stellenbosch. Reyneke has gone one step beyond organic, and farms and produces his wines in accordance with biodynamic principles: “The intention is to interfere as little as possible, to allow nature to be the real maker of the wine and to truly produce terroir specific wines of the highest quality,” he says.

Stellar Winery, South Africa’s largest producer of fine organic wines, processes just over 4 500 tons of organic grapes for the South African and export markets. It was the first organic winemaking operation in the world to gain the coveted Fairtrade certification and the first cellar in Africa to produce commercially viable no-sulphur-added wines. Stellar has subsequently become the largest producer of these wines in the world and is the number one organic wine brand in the UK.

Graham Beck Wines has been acknowledged for restoring and preserving large areas of all three major vegetation types found in the Cape Floral Kingdom – fynbos, renosterveld and succulent karoo on its Robertson estate. Their conservation management plan has earned them Champion status with the Biodiversity and Wine Initiative. Today 4.4 ha of land is allocated to conservation for every 1ha farmed. Although their Franschhoek property faces different challenges, a complete environmental plan is already underway to produce wine with a minimum impact on the environment.

Paul Cluver Wines is a founder of the world?s first Wine and Biodiversity Route, situated around the Groenland Mountain. This 2 000+ hectare estate forms part of the UNESCO world heritage site, the Kogelberg Biosphere. Half of the estate has been set aside for conservation in perpetuity. It is also the initiator and mentor of Thandi Wines – SA’s first black economic empowerment wine brand and the world’s first Fairtrade wine brand.

Organic viticulture can be defined as grape growing that shuns man-made pesticides, herbicides, fungicides or fertilisers. Winners for the Best Organic Wine were made from 2010 or earlier vintages, or blends of various vintages. Wines were accompanied by a valid certification, such as that issued by the Société Générale de Surveillance (SGS), an internationally recognised organic accreditation body.

Judges for the best organic wines were Christian Eedes (chair), Miguel Chan (Southern Sun sommelier), Allan Mullins (Cape Wine Master), Ginette De Fleuriot (Cape Wine Master) and Rianie Strydom (Haskell Vineyards winemaker).The Nedbank Green Wine Awards Best Environmental Practice Award was open to all farms with the minimum requirement for entry being a 70 percent rating from the Integrated Production of Wine (IPW), the voluntary environmental sustainability scheme established in 1998.

Organic certification is also accepted for entry into this category, but must be accompanied by several government authorisation documents such as water use authorisations and plough permits. The judges for the Best Environmental Practice Award were Inge Kotze (project coordinator of the Biodiversity and Wine Initiative), Lourens van Schoor (head of Enviroscientific, auditing body for the IPW), Tom McLaughlin (good business journey Specialist at Woolworths) and Johan Reyneke (Reyneke bio-dynamic wines in Stellenbosch).

Nedbank’s sponsorship of the Green Wine Awards further supports its aim to be the leading “green” bank. Nedbank has a long history of involvement in the wine industry including its 14 year sponsorship of the Cape Winemakers Guild (CWG) and its involvement in the CWG Development Trust helping families of farm workers. The Nedbank Green Trust has been pivotal since 2004 in establishing the Biodiversity Wine Initiative, which is aimed at encouraging responsible land usage and farming within the wine industry. “By sponsoring these pioneering awards we aim to increase awareness of organic, environmentally responsible options for consumers so that they can make more informed wine choices. These awards also recognise winemakers who are making a difference and encourage environmentally sustainable farming,” says Greg Garden, Group Brand Executive for Nedbank.

“The green initiative is about attaining balance in the natural world. With good quality wines the quest is also one of finding balance, and with ?green? wines in particular we strive to achieve more by doing less, or at least disrupting less,” explained Wine’s publishing editor, Cathryn Henderson.More information about the Nedbank Green Wine Awards and interviews with the winning winemakers can be found in December?s issue of Wine magazine on sale now.