{"id":17077,"date":"2017-02-27T06:59:08","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T06:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=17077"},"modified":"2017-02-27T06:59:08","modified_gmt":"2017-02-27T06:59:08","slug":"in-elgin-south-africa-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/south-africa\/in-elgin-south-africa-day-1","title":{"rendered":"In Elgin, South Africa, day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

I’m currently in South Africa’s Elgin Valley, which I visited last October<\/a> for the Chardonnay Symposium. I’m here to experience vintage with four different producers: Iona, Almenkerk, Paul Cluver and Elgin Ridge. I’ll be working as a cellar rat, and documenting the experience in pictures and film. I’m really looking forward to it.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

I’ve had a day to prepare. On Saturday night we went to the amphitheatre at Paul Cluver to see Watershed, a local acoustic\/rock band play. Cluver host a series of concerts (hope@paulcluver) to raise money for local charity the Thembalitsha Foundation. It was a lovely setting and the band were pretty tight – the sell-out crowd really got into it.<\/p>\n

\"Andries
Andries Burger, winemaker, Paul Cluver<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Paul
Paul Cluver<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Sophie
Sophie and Julien Schaal, who make wine in Alsace and Elgin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then yesterday we popped into Almenkerk for a tasting, and then headed over to lunch with the four wineries to discuss plans for the week. This finished around 6 pm, and I went back with Brian and Marion of Elgin Ridge to listen to Brian’s fabulous vinyl collection at a decent volume. This morning I’m off to Iona to begin work.<\/p>\n

\"The
The view from Almenkerk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Impressive
Impressive new releases from Iona: the 2016 Chardonnay and super-elegant 2015 Pinot Noir<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Paul
Paul Cluver Seven Flags Pinot Noir, made with Martin Prier, shows real elegance – this is the latest 2015 release<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Almenkerk's
Almenkerk’s tight, sophisticated Chardonnay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m currently in South Africa’s Elgin Valley, which I visited last October for the Chardonnay Symposium. I’m here to experience vintage with four different producers: Iona, Almenkerk, Paul Cluver and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[236,374],"class_list":["post-17077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-south-africa","tag-elgin","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17089,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17077\/revisions\/17089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}