I was wandering around the village preparing for the “Franschhoek Pairings” Festival, checking out which food was being matched with which wine at the various restaurants. As my knowledge stretches no further than a Sauvignon blanc with snoek and a Merlot with meatballs (which is one step up from my cousin in the Free State who thinks pairings mean a beer with the braai!) I decided to seek wisdom from my favourite chef, Shaun Schoeman of the Fyndraai Restaurant at Solms-Delta.
When I put the question to him about how he set about pairing Solms-Delta wines with his traditional Cape dishes, he grew very pensive. “It’s not so simple,” he muttered. ”With European cuisine you know from years of tradition which wine goes with which dish. But here I am dealing with fynbos flavours from our Khoi herb garden and with curries from the old slave days. So a straightforward cultivar like a Chardonnay or a Pinotage is not responsive to a flavour like vinkelblaar or wild fennel.
“But hang on,” I replied. “As far as I remember none of the Solms-Delta wines are straightforward cultivars. They are all blends, and some are made by the desiccation method, which is pretty uniquely African. Don’t they speak to your traditional dishes?”
Shaun brightened up. “Yes of course, I said it was not ‘simple’, not that is was ‘impossible.’ Take our !Karri, our honey wine, made from an old San story; you can’t even call it a recipe. That goes beautifully with rooibos coconut cheesecake. Another unique blend that is difficult to match is Koloni (Rhine Riesling, Muscat d’Alexandrie, Muscat de Frontignan.) This is a dessert wine and in the end I found a great match for it with a mature Cheddar, a young Brie or chocolate Malva pudding. Now take the Hiervandaan (Shiraz, Carignan, Mourvedre, Grenache and Viognier), that goes perfectly with extra matured beef with peppercorn flavours.”
“What about my personal favourite drinking wine, Cape Jazz Shiraz?”
“Well, the nice thing is you can simply drink that for pleasure, but it loves any Cape foods, from savoury to sweet, like tomato bredie, pickled tongue, calf’s liver and ending with brandy pudding. The soft bubbles in your mouth pick out those distinctive flavours. The Lekkerwijn Rosé goes very well with any food with coriander, star anise or wild garlic, like our famous frikkadels or pickled fish.”
Shaun ended his culinary lesson with a story about how he searched for a herb to round off his springbok ragout. He tried one fynbos herb after the other, adding a pinch of one here, talking a leaf away there, until he found bloublom salie (wild sage) which proved to be perfect.
It occurred to me that there was a wonderful parallel between the master chef sifting through his aromatic magic garden of herbs from the African soil, and master wine-maker Hilko Hegewisch running through his range of grape varietals also coming from the same Boland soil, trying a small quantity of this and then of that, to create blends as unique as Shaun’s dishes. And providing a unique African match.
John van Zyl
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