Tasting Note: Palladius 2005, The Sadie Family, Swartland

I’ve been a little quiet, these days, and it’s not because I haven’t been thinking about wine. On the contrary, I’ve been coordinating (and hosting) the 14th edition of the Vendredis du Vin, the French-language equivalent of the Wine Blogging Wednesdays. We had a great time with this collective tasting on unusual wines, which led us to discover the likes of gewurztraminer and petite arvine from Languedoc, or a peculiar wine blended from Rhône grenache and pinot noir from Burgundy – a great kind of sacrilege. If you read French (or can make good use of online translation tools), it’s worth a visit. You can see the summary on my French blog.

I could almost have included the magnificent Palladius 2005 from Eben Sadie, one of the most prominent winemakers from South Africa. Sadie took his first professional steps in winemaking, along with Tom Lubbe, at Charles Back‘s Spice Route project in the late 1990s, before

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Matassa meets Montreal and Manhattan

My good friend and winemaker extraordinaire Tom Lubbe is hopping over the Pond, next week, to showcase his wines in Montreal and New York City. I’m an absolute fan of Matassa Wines, a Domaine I had the chance to visit. A great week walking through the (biodynamic) vineyards, tasting the grapes, packing bottles into cases, pallets into trucks, and to stomp those gorgeous grapes with my own bare (clean) feet (see here and here for details of my stay and, more importantly, to learn more about Matassa).

In Montreal, Tom Lubbe will be hosting