In the Blogs - Ch Leoville-Barton & Rhone?

Nicolas Pierron, Head Sommelier at Hong Kong's Island Shangri-La hotel selects De Waals'Top of the Hill Pinotage for his wine of the week at winebuzz.hk

He says "At Restaurant Petrus I usually use this wine in a blind tasting and most of the guests think that it originates from the Rhone Valley."

While Brian Freedman - WineChateau.com's resident blogger at UnCorkLife.com finds Wildekrans' 2006 Pinotage reminded him "in a lot of ways, of some sort of cousin to a Leoville-Barton, though it never lost its own identity. Just gorgeous."

As he says "Unfortunately, too many people still aren’t familiar enough with Pinotage. But it’s a grape worth exploring. You never know when you’ll find a standout...or two."


.

Just Fancy That

From the Arniston Bay Blog, posted 21 September

A roast rack of Karoo lamb is just the right dish to prepare on Heritage Day.
This dish maybe time consuming to prepare but the result is an amazingly delicious dish which is well worth the effort.
To keep within the heritage theme, serve this meal with a uniquely South African Pinotage. The Arniston Bay Pinotage 2008 is a well balanced wine with vanilla tones and savoury flavours. This wine is a great match for the South African Karoo lamb.

From the Kumkani blog, posted 21 September

A roast rack of Karoo lamb is just the right dish to prepare on Heritage Day.
This dish maybe time consuming to prepare but the result is an amazingly delicious dish which is well worth the effort.
To keep within the heritage theme, serve this meal with a uniquely South African Pinotage. The Kumkani Pinotage 2006. This well balanced wine has a ripe berry fruit nose and French oak aromas adding vanilla and spice with a excellent finish.

Both blogs posted Sally Schneider's December 1969 recipe copied from a US site and although temperatures have been converted to Celcius from Fahrenheit the lamb pictured is not Karoo but "American lamb, because it is corn fed, is milder in flavor than Australian or New Zealand lamb, which is grass fed."

How come both Kumkani and Arniston Bay blogs happened to post the same thing on the same day? Seems that the brands have outsourced production of their blogs to the same PR Agency, Bivio Consulting.

Bivio Consulting also run the blogs of several other wine brands including Boschendal , Four Cousins ,Tall Horse and Versus . Content is mostly cut and paste items from other websites with minimal original content or news about the winery, it staff or its products.

No doubt Bivio managed to impress the wineries with the importance to a business of blogging, however Bivio themselves are not leading by example. Bivio's very own blog, hosted by the free Blogger service, has had only 3 items posted this year, the last one on 10 April declared "Our site is currently under construction".

I think these wineries are missing the point. Surely a blog is a way to communicate with their customers and to let us who cannot visit the winery to know what is going on throughout the seasons. It isn't rocket science and it needn't cost money. I can imagine the winery MD smugly boasting that 'Oh, yes, we have a blog' but I don't think that paying a PR agency to post content culled from the web that has no connection with the wine brand that owns the blog makes sense.

.

Pinotage in the Blogs....

Andrew Barrow of Spittoon has posted a report of his recent visit to Beyerskloof. He says

While age worthy it is the younger Pinotage single varietals that impressed during the cellar tasting. With ripe, sweetish upfront fruit, good structure and length they have structure and drinkability with the Beyerskloof Reserve Pinotage being singularly impressive.

He also enjoyed the Pinotage Burger! See his report here

Peas on Toast doesn't seem to have heard of the worldwide airport ban on liquids in hand baggage and had two bottles of Diemersfontein Pinotage confiscated, an act that

was nothing short of the most sacrilegous sacrilege on the planet.

Her friends in Istanbul will be disappointed but at least the airport security team had something decent to drink with their dinner.

Diemersfontain Pinotage was the secret ingredient that helped the Cherryflava team in South Africa win first place in their annual potjiekos competition.

We made our famous lamb and mushroom pot, laced with a bottle of DiemersfontainPinotage and fresh organic ingredients.

Mike Rosenberg at Naked Vine released his inner Shatner trying the Golden Kaan range. He paired the Pinotage 2006 and Shiraz 2007 with a spiced lamb dish and found that

the Pinotage was much more interesting. I thought it stood up to the spices in the marinade and the sauce, and the flavors in the wine itself stood out.

And Yoav Shapira was pleasantly surprised by Souther Right's 2007 Pinotage The 2007.

I expected it to be more blunt, since it's so young. But it was very smooth.
Almost too smooth.