MasterChef SA Judges
Pete Goffe Wood
Nederburg is adding impetus to its role as the wine sponsor of the popular cooking show MasterChef South Africa by hosting MasterChef judge Pete Goffe-Wood at its interactive Taste Theatre at this year’s Gugulethu Wine Festival in May.
Nederburg’s Taste Theatre will explore the impact of various food flavours on wine. Visitors to the event that runs over Friday, May 25, and Saturday, May 26, will have the chance to sample various foods with a selection of wines to discover how they affect the taste of the wines.
Pete Goffe-Wood, a familiar face to foodies throughout South Africa, will co-present with Nederburg on the first day of the show.
The Taste Theatre presentation is conceived as a taste adventure, says Nederburg spokesperson Wencke Grobler. “It will highlight the impact the five basic flavours – sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami (a Japanese term to describe a flavour that is intensely savoury) – can have when it comes to matching dishes with wine. The intention is to demonstrate how something that seems as insignificant as a squeeze of lemon or a little extra salt added to your food can make a substantial difference to the way you experience an accompanying wine.”
She says the theatre isn’t meant to create more rules surrounding wine. “If anything, the aim is the exact opposite. We want wine lovers to free themselves from the burdens of do’s and don’ts involved with wine and food matching. All we want is to show how you can enrich the pleasure of the wine you drink by offering you the experience of combining it in a way that brings compatible flavours together. So often you can taste a wine with a food that is not ideal and the result can diminish your enjoyment of both. It doesn’t have to be that way once you are exposed to some very easy guidelines that are more about common sense than anything else.”
She says popular red, white and dessert wines from the Nederburg range will be lined up in the Taste Theatre for visitors to try with foods such as beef, tuna, cheddar cheese and chocolate.
The Taste Theatre is open to festival goers on a first-come first-served basis. The presentation will be staged at 18:00, 19:00 and 20:00 on both days.
Nederburg will also be showcasing wines from its multi-tier selection at an exhibition stand on the show.
The winery has the highest number of five-star rated wines in the 2012 Platter’s South African Wine Guide, a distinction it shares with two other wineries. In 2011, Nederburg was the Platter’s Winery of the Year. Last year, a Nederburg wine achieved the highest score on the inaugural Five Nations Wine Challenge, involving South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Argentina.
“Festival goers will have the opportunity of tasting some of these wines and the Nederburg team will have the opportunity of meeting more of Cape Town’s winelovers,” says Grobler.
This is the second time the Gugulethu Wine Festival is being staged and follows on last year’s highly successful event that attracted visitors from across the Western Cape. Once again, it is being hosted on the roof of the Gugulethu Square Mall by high-profile local entrepreneurs Mzoli Ngcawuzele and Lungile Mbalo from Mzoli’s Place.
The festival runs from 16:00 to 21:00 on May 25 and from 15:00 to 21:00 on May 26. Tickets, at R80 a head can be booked by going to www.gugulethuwinefestival.co.za
DATE 7 MAY 2012
ISSUED BY DKC (DE KOCK COMMUNICATIONS)
FOR NEDERBURG WINES
QUERIES WENCKE GROBLER, NEDERBURG SA (021) 809 7000 or 078 314 3439
TESSA DE KOCK/MARLISE POTGIETER, DKC (021) 422 2690
