Now that South Africa’s 2014 harvest is over and the new wines are aging away in their barrels and tanks, I asked friends from a couple of my favorite wineries to report on the vintage. Muratie is a tremendous farm in the Simonsberg region of Stellenbosch that I had the pleasure of visiting in both 2010 and 2011. Director Rijk Melck, who was kind enough to show me around me on my second visit, took some time to chat with me about vintage 2014.
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This month kicked off my first-ever vineyard growing season in Wisconsin. Now that winter is finally over it’s time to wake up the vines and get them ready to bear fruit, and time for me to learn how that’s done.
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Sometimes it feels like rosé season has to happen one day at a time: spring seems to have arrived, then you get a week of temperatures in the twenties, then you get one 70-degree day and you have to seize it with some rosé and snacks on the porch before it turns cold again.
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I’ve made no secret of my affection for Beyoncé’s new album, a remarkable ode to love, marriage, sexuality, parenthood, feminism, and car partitions that plays on themes of sex and power, with Beyoncé’s trademark combination of vulnerability and bravado never more honest or captivating. My friend Lauren and I recently enjoyed the visual album over a bottle* of chenin from a producer I don’t see much here in the US.
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My friends Kate and Wes, like many Madisonians, are big DIY types, so it should be no surprise that a recent dinner with them involved Kate’s homemade camembert cream cheese (that’s as earthy and delicious as it sounds), some sort of artisanal charcuterie, homemade bread, Kate’s marmalade, and aperitifs in the form of Wes’s home-brewed stout. (He’s an excellent brewer and this was my favorite of his beers to date.)
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