Another bottle of Dr. Charles Niehaus 2010 at Il Leone for lunch along with a rare tagliata (strips of sirloin topped with rocket or arugala if you wear a bowtie) and the sneaking feeling that this top of the line Roodeberg could be the best SA red of the decade so far.  Perhaps even the millennium.

The connections to Iggy Pop (above) just keep on coming.  They were both created in the late 1940s and if Iggy’s best song was Raw Power, then this is what Dr. Chas delivers in spades.  No wonder Iggy called his greatest hits Nude & Rude.  Roodeberg should be renamed Rudeberg for the all-important American market, which is where this baby belongs.

The press release says that Rudeberg’s new home in La Concorde “once served as the reception for KWV directors who hosted dignitaries and celebrities” (Gé Korsten perhaps or Min Shaw?) and the “velvet, leather and wooden textures now reflect Rudeberg’s history of stature and elegance.”  Above is a snapshot of winos enjoying themselves in the KWV Sanhedrin on Wednesday.  A chance to sit on the chairs graced by the bottoms of Ritzema Steytler de la Bat and his brother directors was not to be missed.  Talk about puttin’ on the Ritz!

Imposing La Concorde took 22 years to design and 2 years to build and was ironically funded by profits selling Cape Smoke brandy to the boys up north fighting Rommel.  With the SANDF losing 13 soldiers in a fire-fight with Seleka rebels in the Central African Republic last weekend, perhaps the big brandy guns in the Cathedral Cellar need to be dusted off and deployed up north once again.