Sutherland – stars in Prince Albert

One of the wine brands Sarah Graham and I were so happy to take with us to the African Relish Cookery School in Prince Albert when we presented a Food and Wine Workshop there a while back was the Sutherland, a brand from the famous Thelema Winery in Stellenbosch, though the grapes used for the Sutherland Wines come from Elgin – a real cool climate wine growing region.  Cool in terms of temperature and fashion!

Riesling is one of my most favourite white wine grapes and I just love its wonderful mouth filling acidity and fabulous flavours which make it a perfect wine which will tackle almost any dish.  It has the most delicious full sappy ripe winter melon flavours with a smart undertow of minerals.  It is always fresh and vibrant and the aftertaste remains on your palate for a long long time.  It is aromatic and fruity, unoaked and dry and just gets better with age.  We found it went well with a number of vegetable dishes we prepared, in particular a dish of Zucchine in Agrodolce [click here for the recipe] a delicious sweet and sour Sicilian styled dish which I created for the African Relish Food and Wine Workshop.

Sarah came up with a colour- and flavourful dish, a tomato Tarte Tatin with goats cheese.  Stephanie Tatin would have been thrilled – she and her sister Caroline owned the Hotel Tatin in Lamotte-Beuvron, France.

It was she who almost burned the apples for a pie, so she put the crust on top, baked it and put it on a plate, pastry side down and created a dish remembered and used and varied more than a hundred years after her death.  The lovely full sweet mouthfilling flavours of the roasted tomato and the goat’s cheese were the perfect partners for the Sutherland Pinot Noir.