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How to Cook with Wine

white wine works well with shellfish

Am I preaching to the choir when I advocate cooking with wine? Or is this something we would all like to be a little more confident in doing? For me, it’s something that I think I would like to do more often, but when it comes right down [...]

Grills and Vines

a glass of wine for every reason

Vine is vut my Papa used to make in ze basement on ze farm. He harvested red currants and raspberries from his garden and transformed them into something decidedly unMennonite. I remember the huge fermenting vessel with its apparatus on top and how fascinated we three girls [...]

Now Play Nicely Together

the glasses are all empty except this one

Oh snobby, snobby me. I chose the theme of ‘Pairing Wine and Cheese’ for my latest newsletter believing it would be an easy task to apply what I know about food and wine pairing to the art of pairing wine with cheese. How hard could it [...]

Double Love Trouble

I'd say that two girls with guns wearing bikinis and boots could lead to trouble… maybe.

Some Young Punks have got people talking.

If you dig into the archives of what I was playing around with wine-wise last summer, you will see the good times that were had with a bottle of Shiraz Mataro [...]

Summer Sipping

all it needs is a squeeze of lemon and some Sauvignon Blanc

Oh yeah… bring on the SUN! People, we have waited for a little longer than usual for this warmness so do not let me hear any of you complaining. I know, some of you have to work out in it and being [...]

Tasting History and Hope

Cape Town as it appears today

Surprisingly, the world’s sixth largest wine producer and one of the oldest wine regions on earth still maintains a fairly low profile. It’s time to put on our comfortable shoes and take up our corkscrews to go exploring below the equator again, for there are plenty of rare [...]

Ratings Smack Down Wine Tasting

All the open bottles are kept hidden

One of our team members suggested a great concept for a Thursday Night Swirl wine tasting that was perfect during the Winter Olympics weeks: several of our staff would choose a wine they liked to present to the Swirl participants, the participants would then evaluate and rate [...]

Still Swirling

I like my job. Yes, there are many ordinary moments at work, but then there are the things that make me look around and muse ‘do I really get paid to do this?’

Tasting Table

Speaking of Grapes

One of the best work-things that I get to do is organize wine tastings for [...]

How to Grow Upside Down Grapes

Chile and Argentina

I have only been south of the equator on one occasion, and that was on a trip to the island of Fiji ten years ago. Really, when you are south of the equator it doesn’t feel so different from being north of the equator. For the most part it is [...]