Charles has made wine everywhere from DGB to Parras de la Fuente in Mexico, the oldest winery in the Americas. It was one tipsy night in Spain that a friend suggested Ladera for his own dream wine range. Ladera means hillside in Catalan – for Charles it had a special resonance; his grandfather’s first farm was called Die Heuwel (the hill). The wine tasting started with his Blanc de Noir, made with pinotage grapes (we also had a chance to taste the mos, or just-fermented juice, of this wine) followed by what he describes as his ‘most stressful wine’, the Wild Child Chardonnay. Charles intervenes as little as possible with his wine, adding just a dash of sulphur. Once the chardonnay goes into the barrel, he has no control over it or how it turns out – hence, the Wild Child. The final wine we tried was his shiraz. Charles became so enthused that we ended up doing a vertical tasting, starting with the 2009 (with grapes sourced from four bush-vine vineyards in Malmesbury and trellised-vine in Paarl) to 2010 (where the vineyards were whittled down to two) to 2011 (made purely from the block Charles considers the best of the four). We were definitely warm by then!

With our appetites whetted, and the rain still coming down, we went straight to lunch. Madri, Charles’ wife, had prepared a gorgeous farmstyle feast. Fresh figs and grapes, nestled with roasted plums and cinnamon-crusted pears, fresh breads with a variety of cheeses and cold meats, groenvye konfyt, a zesty broccoli and pecan-nut salad, Italian potato salad, homemade chicken liver pate, caramalised onion spread… all washed down with lemonade and Ladera wines.

If you’d like to organise your own day-trip out to Wolseley, Madri can make up a picnic basket for you to take out into the orchards. Call Charles on 072 536 0055 or Madri on 083 726 2803 to order your basket and book your fig picking. Co-ordinates are 33″28’20.66S & 19″11’27.45E. But you’ll have to wait until next season!

Finally, the skies cleared, the sun started sparkling off the trees and we got out into the orchards.

As soon as you step into the orchard you smell the sweet dustiness of the sun-warmed figs. The fig trees are endearingly characterful, gnarled with large, blowsy leaves.

The figs were abundant – “There are so many even the birds have hardly made a dent!” one Slow Fooder was heard exclaiming – and we quickly filled our punnets with juicy ripe figs and hard green ones for preserving. At R5 a punnet (about 700g) some people got very excited, taking up to six punnets – they must have had plans for them! At least two of us made this salad:  http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/salad-recipes/the-easiest-sexiest-salad-in-the-world.

Selecting the best figs (about the size of a child’s fist, slightly yellow with a bursting pink ‘star’ at the base) kept us happily busy for about half an hour. The kids loved it too!

Then it was back to the farmhouse for koffie, koeksusters and a bit of a kuier, before weaving our way back home through some of the Western Cape’s most breathtaking scenery. What a day!

Join us for a convivial lunch in the shade of the peach trees at Hoogwater
Farm in Wolsely, followed by a stroll through the fig orchards where you can
chose the juiciest fruit for yourself.

Hoogwater farmer Charles Osche also makes wine, and will give us an
introduction to them in the cellars before we move to the peach orchards for
lunch. Lunch will be a table spread with homemade breads, pate, cheeses,
preserves and salads (fig, blue cheese and rocket, for example), with
something sweet for dessert. Then we’ll pick: The Mediterranean figs -
small, plump and sweet – will be at their best when we visit.

Children are very welcome (make sure that they have water, sunscreen and
hats).

**This event is now FULLY BOOKED**

Event Details:

Date:  Saturday 11 February 2012

Time:  11.30am to approximately 4pm

Venue:  Hoogwater Farm, Wolseley; about an hour-and-a-half from Cape Town
(directions will be sent to attendees).

Cost:  R140 per person (R60 for kids under 10). Includes a picnic-style
sit-down lunch plus soft drinks, and a wine-tasting (wine available to buy).
Figs, R5 per punnet (which holds six figs).

We will also be able to visit the festival stands, chat with the brewers and taste more of the range of artisanal beers Cape Town has to offer.

Date: Sat 26^th November
Time: 12:30pm
Venue: Hamilton’s Rugby Club
Price: R80

(This includes your entrance ticket, the Slow Food Mother City presentation and tasting, and a voucher for a pint of beer)

More about the Cape Town Festival of Beer

Aside from our private Slow Food Mother City event, the Cape Town Festival of Beer offers beer tastings, beer sales, lucky draws, brewing demos and competition, kiddies entertainment area, food stalls, braai competition, top live entertainment and much more.

There will be a huge selection of craft breweries and the chance to taste beers you have not seen before, and also chat to the actual brewers. You can read more about the festival here.

Bookings

Please book your ticket through our automated system, here. There are only 24 places available, so please book promptly to avoid disappointment.

UNFORTUNATELY, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO LACK OF SUPPORT. WE WILL ARRANGE ANOTHER VISIT AT A LATER STAGE.

The Slow Food movement in Cape Town is delighted to enjoy a longstanding relationship with and appreciation for Buffalo Ridge and its award-winning cheeses. They are the only producer of buffalo milk cheeses in South Africa, and their buffalo mozzarella, yoghurt and fromage blanc can be found at select delis and stores around Cape Town.

Come with Slow Food Mother City to see where the cheese is made, meet the buffalo, and hear the farm’s story from farmer and cheese maker Wayne Rademeyer.

Included in your admin fee is a Buffalo Ridge sampler goodie bag, consisting of a mozzarella, fromage blanc and yoghurt – all at wholesale price. Additional cheese can be purchased on the day, with cash (no credit card facilities available).

IN A NUTSHELL:

Buffalo Ridge Farm, off the R44, 11km north of Wellington

Sunday, 30^th October at 10h30 for 11h00

Members price: R85.00

Guests price: R95.00

Children under 12: free of charge (but receive no goodie bag)

The visit should take 1 ½-2 hours. We recommend you book a table for lunch at one of Wellington’s charming restaurants.

Please note that we are test-driving our new online payment system. Please book and pay for your place through this booking system, and not through email/EFT. You should receive an email confirming your booking within one day. Please email us if you do not receive this! Thank you for your patience as we attempt to make our booking system easier for our volunteer committee, and our members.

Directions and further details will be emailed to you in the week before the event.

Bookings:

Please click on the relevant item below to add it to your cart. If you are a member, but plan to bring a guest, please click once on ‘Members’ and once on ‘Guests’.  To check out/proceed with your order and payment, click on the check out button in your shopping cart in the top right hand corner of this page.

To increase the number of tickets you wish to purchase, click on ‘view cart‘ in the top right hand corner of this page, and increase or decrease the number of tickets, before clicking on the checkout button to process your booking and payment. If you do not wish to change the number of tickets you are purchasing, simply press the checkout button to be taken straight to payment options.

We’ll spend a couple of hours with Michael in his new workshop learning how to make our own pork sausage, salami and bacon, which we’ll then get to take home with us. This will be followed by a delicious lunch in the cosy farmhouse:  hearty winter soups and farm-baked bread, prepared by Michael’s wife, Karen.

Charcuterie is the fancy term for the curing, seasoning and smoking of meat. It began as a way to preserve meat for longer periods, but has developed into an art of its own. This workshop with Michael will be a simple introduction to this age-old art, which will give you the basic skills to experiment more widely at home.

Some of you will have fond memories of our first visit to Lelieblom in winter last year, when we waded around in the farm pond, foraging for waterblommetjies. We enjoyed a delicious waterblommetjie stew for lunch and were bowled over by the amazing selection of local producers that Karen had invited to her home.

We went a little crazy purchasing cured meats, creamy local cheeses, Darling Brew beers, the most delicate oyster mushrooms. We’re thrilled to be going back to the farm again, and we’d love you to join us.

Event details:

Date: Saturday 4 June 2011

Time: Please arrive at Lelieblom at 10am. We’ll do the workshop first and then move on to our lunch in the farmhouse.

Cost: Members – R180 per person; guests – R200 per person. This cost includes your take-home meat: 500gr bacon, 500gr salami and 1kg pork sausage per person, as well as your simple hearty lunch.

For children’s prices, please see the note below. Please note that Lelieblom is not licensed so you’ll need to bring your own wine to have with the lunch. Some juice may be provided but it’s probably best to bring your favourites with you.

Bring: An apron for the workshop (it will get messy working with meat) and a cooler box to take home your meat and other purchases.

Extras: Michael will have more meat available for purchase on the day (more salami, bacon and pork sausage, as well as eisbein and boerbok meat). Karen will organise for local producers to come and present their delicious wares, so bring extra cash for purchasing extra meat and delicious cheese, mushrooms and preserves.

Child-friendly event: While we generally welcome children to our events – and Lelieblom is a great venue for them with many hand-reared tame farm animals – we are cautious about having children in the meat processing workshop. This is due to the limited space in the workshop, as well as the presence of raw meat and sharp knives. We’d like to ask you to think very carefully about whether your children will be well-behaved and safe in such a setting. Parents will obviously be completely responsible for their children at all times. Children 12 and over will need to pay the full price, and under-12s will only be charged R20 towards their lunch (but obviously do not get any meat to take home).

Space on this workshop will be limited by the size of the meat processing room, so hurry and sign up soon. For now, we ask that members bring only one guest each. As we get closer to the time, if there are spaces left, we may allow already signed-up members to bring additional guests.

If you would like to join us, please book now using the form below.

Sorry - this event is now fully booked! If you'd like to go onto a waiting list, please email events@slowfoodmothercity.co.za and provide us with a contact number so we can let you know if there are any cancellations!

On Saturday 11 June 2011, Slow Food Mother City will be visiting the Green Point Park & Biodiversity Garden.

The Biodiversity Showcase Garden is situated in the new Green Point Park in Cape Town. It features over 300 local Cape plant species, animal sculptures, interactive displays, demonstration gardens, a Khoikhoi display and more.

Taking us on a guided tour will be Marijke Honig, who helped design and create the garden last year.

Marijke is a botanist and landscaper who specialises in indigenous plants and sustainable landscapes.  During the tour, Marijke will give us an overview of how the garden was created, but will focus in particular on the KhoiKhoi Food Garden and tell us more about how food was gathered from the wild and prepared in various ways.

The tour will start at 10am, and last approximately an hour.  Children are welcome (under supervision).

Dates & times: Saturday 11 June 2011.  10am.
Location: Green Point Park
Cost: R55 (members), R65 (guests).  Free for children under 12.  R35 of each entry goes towards raising funds to maintain the park.

Numbers are limited.  If you would like to join us, please book now using the form below.

Warmly,
Slow Food Mother City

Fruit-gathering and picnic at ‘bio-logic’ Paarl wine farm

Saturday 4 December, 10am – 3pm

Christmas is plum pudding time – yet the dark, rich pudding (with its restorative brandy tang) has always felt too heavy for our sunshine-filled holiday. So, instead, Slow Food Mother City will be celebrating the season in the orchards, eating the juicy fruit fresh from the trees! On Saturday 4 December, we’ll be plum-picking in Paarl, at Avondale, a wine farm run on ‘bio-logic’ principles. You will be able to take some of the fruits of your labour home with you, for eating or jamming.

Avondale tasting room and cellar

As it is the start of the holidays, this will be a family-friendly day. We’ll be welcomed with a glass of Avondale’s famous MCC (and grape juice for the kids). Avondale owner and viticulturalist, Johnathan Grieve will chat to us about plum farming and the fruit itself as well as the nature-friendly farming methods used in the orchards and vineyards (including the famous snail-eating ducks!). We’ll then spend some time picking our own plums* – but don’t eat too many! After our hard work in the orchards, we’ll be served a picnic lunch of homemade breads, cheeses, preserves, salads and festive gammon. Those who are still feeling energetic are invited to taste a selection of Avondale’s award-winning wines. Or you can just doze under the plum trees.

Avondale's ducks clear the vineyards of snails

This is a unique opportunity, not available to the general public, to learn more about this fascinating farm and take home some very special, safe and tasty produce. The Farm Manager tells us the plums are going to be particularly good this year, so book now to join us!

* Each attendee will be able to take home a reasonable amount of plums – buying of additional plums, if available, will be negotiated on the day. Avondale wines will be available to purchase at cellar-door prices.

About Avondale

Avondale wines are highly regarded, with several Platter four-star wines among them. And they use no technological tricks to achieve this: “We’ve trusted the wisdom of nature to guide us. We use cover crops instead of fertiliser to restore the balance of the soil. We never use artificial sprays to control pests – ducks and wasps do that job for us.”

This philosophy extends to the Avondale cellars:

>     Wild yeast fermentation is allowed in most instances for all wines.

>       All wines are low in sulphur – less than half the norm.

>       No enzymes or any other regulators, catalysing agents, or softeners are used to prepare Avondale wines.

>        No synthetic cleaning materials are used in the cellar.

Details

Date: Saturday 4 December 2010

Time: 10am for the plum-picking (Lunch will be served at approximately 1pm).

Place: Avondale Wine Estate in Paarl (For more details, visit: www.avondalewine.co.za).

Price: R100 for members, R120 for guests*, and R60 for kids 4-12 years.

Parents are wholly responsible for their own children during the outing.

*Due to demand at recent events, we will initially limit places to one adult guest per member (all members may bring their children). If there are still places available after one week, we will give you the option of bringing more guests with you.

Bookings:

Given the popularity of this outing, we suggest you book and pay quickly. We have limited space! Click here to book.

First come, first served (members have gotten advance warning). If you have not made the deposit within four days of booking, and there are others waiting, we will make your space/s available to the next person in line. Please book by 20 November 2010.

As Slow Fooders we generally like to support the smaller producers who are more hands on and bring a little magic to their product which is often missing from the mass produced version. While these ‘artisanal’ products often end up costing more, they are definitely worth it. They usually taste better and are better for you.

In South Africa this principle applies when it comes to beer. Most of our beer is produced by SAB and while it is natural and without additives, it is made in very large quantities and designed to suit the palate of a wide audience. Artisanal beers from micro breweries on the other hand are produced in small quantities and each one has an individual personality and character.

The We love Real Beer initiative (a collaboration between Jack Black Beer and Collective São Gabriel) is organising a Craft Beer Festival on 23rd September (2010) at the Neighbourgoods Market at the Old Biscuit Mill in Salt River, Cape Town. This will be a fantastic opportunity for beer lovers and non beer lovers alike to experience a large selection of the craft beers which are being produced in South Africa. Non beer lovers will be pleasantly surprised to learn that craft beer doesn’t taste like the mass produced stuff we are used to, but has a much fuller and more interesting taste.

One of our Slow Food Mother City committee members, Dax Villanueva, will be a judge at the festival and we hope to see you there too.

Further details available on the website: www.weloverealbeer.com

Saturday 11 September, 2010

On Saturday 11th September our sister convivium, Slow Food Cape Town, will be visiting Solms Delta wine estate outside Franschhoek to tour their culinary veldkos (indigenous food) garden project. They have kindly invited us to come along. You can view their invitation here.

Now, here’s the complicated part.

They have also arranged a delicious two-course lunch at Fyndraai, the Solms Delta restaurant, as part of the outing. However, as we try to offer affordable events, we have arranged with them so that members can choose to either attend both the veldkos garden tour and the restaurant meal for R230 for members and R250 for guests, OR they can attend only the vegetable garden tour for R40.

If you wish to attend both the vegetable garden tour AND the restaurant meal, please book through Slow Food Cape Town, by emailing Adrian at: adrad@mweb.co.za. Please note booking closes on Monday 6 September.

If you wish only to attend the vegetable garden tour and then make your own plans for lunch, please book through Slow Food Mother City, by filling in our online booking form.

Members who choose not to attend the lunch at Fyndraai restaurant are welcome to make their own plans for lunch in the area. The Slow Food Mother City committee will be picnicking and viewing the plum blossoms at a neighbouring private farm, and you are also welcome to join us on our picnic for no extra cost (aside from your own food and drink!).

If you are confused or just wish to ask a question, please contact Kate at kate@slowfoodmothercity.co.za.