Recently I reconnected with one of my long-lost primary school besties, and it wasn’t via Facebook. I bumped into her mother (who hadn’t changed much in over a quarter of a century) at the Noordhoek Community Market, which takes place at Cape Point Vineyards every Thursday between 16h00 and 20h30.
I suppose it was inevitable that I should find Petra’s mum at a market because back in the ’80s, when most of us were still “living in an Oros world” and believing Farmer Brown when he said his chickens “taste so good cos they eat so good”, the Wrights were always to be found at the Bryanston Organic and Natural Market. They were ahead of their time as far as “conscious” eating goes.
Today Petra lives in Kentucky, USA, with her Irish husband and their five children, and it is a delight to see pictures of the produce she grows in her beautiful garden and what she creates from it (yes, she is on Facebook, as it turns out). I hope she’ll visit her parents in Cape Town soon, finding an hour or two to spend with me at Cape Point Vineyards, where we’ll tuck into some of Franck Dangereux’s tapas from the Food Barn, and catch up face to face over a glass of Duncan Savage’s Cape Point Vineyards wine.
We could opt for the easy-drinking Splattered Toad sauvignon blanc at R48/bottle, with a percentage of sales going towards conserving the endangered Western Leopard Toad (all too often killed crossing busy roads to reach their traditional breeding ponds). But I think the occasion will call for the Sauvignon Blanc 2013, which contains a 5% splash of semillon.
Brimming with limes and grapefruit, also tropical passionfruit and mango, with a steely mineral core, the wine has a creamy texture in perfect balance with tangy acidity. R98/bottle.
NOTE: This is the original, uncut version of the column published in Sunday Times Food Weekly on 3 August 2014.