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What you’re seeing right here are two bottles of Armand De Briganc champagne…

Witness it.

But don’t get muddled up thinking the small one on the left is a buddy bottle. It isn’t – it’s a normal size bottle and, in fact, the bottle on the right contains 30 liters of what is regarded as the worlds finest bubbly…

Perspective.

This ‘Midas’ bottle, cracked open in Vegas club XS, takes the cake as this New Year’s top champagne story. It cost a staggering $100,000 (about R700k) and the cork was lifted at UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez’s party. But it wasn’t him who fitted the bill. All we know is that two strong men were employed to carry the 80-pound bottle over to a high roller’s table.

Quite the spectacle!

Just look at the new Johnny Walker Gold that comes with an “Ice Pillar”…

Serve Chilled - that's how they want you to drink it

Basically, it lets you freeze your bottle and then extend it’s temperature so you can enjoy your whiskey they way it’s meant to be served (for much much longer).

“To make this new consumption ritual visually conveyed, we have symbolized gold confined into ice. The Ice Pillar keeps Gold Label bottles frozen.” Denis Boudard says.

If we take a closer look, the inner box is inspired by frosted gold leaves and symbolizes the whole “Gold Label” vibe, while the outer box is transparent depicting the ice wrapping the item.

The slanting dynamics of Johnnie Walker Gold’s emblematic label

The Gold Ice Pillar is covered by a metallic gold anodized ring with embossed logos – it makes the product and the brand immediately identifiable and is also used for closing the case.

There’s a little bakery in Japan that’s been baking these awesome life-size iPhone cookies for two years. But recently, photos have appeared on Twitter and this blog, sparking huge demand…

Now you can literally eat your words

Originally, the small, local bakery made the cookie as a special birthday present for a customer’s husband. But thanks to social media, the $33 cookie is being ordered by hundreds of people around Japan (sadly it’s unavailable outside the country, so you’ve got to know someone who knows someone…).

Two months: The current waiting time for an iPhone cookie.

Perhaps there is another cake boss out there willing to try bake some for me?

This my friends is a limited edition range of chrome decanters (fancy hip flasks for the hobos who didn’t know that) that represent the radiators of famous cars…

Park them in your intoxication station

The set, each made after carefully studying the originals, includes Rolls Royce, Bugatti, Mercedes, Bentley & Jaguar. What’s more is that they are all accurate to scale and made in the original materials, so that they may be regarded as genuine collectors’ items preserving the memory of the car concerned…

I see dead car radiators

If you’re keen to pay an arm and a leg, you can get hold of  Nicholas Brawer at Madison Avenue in New York by sending him an email.

Otherwise, keep looking at extravagant auto merchandise on my blog:

• Hard Drives For Petrol Heads
• Gold Bugatti Veyron Model
• Audi Auto-Inspired Piano

On 28 Nov I’ll be heading to the Food Wine Design Fair in Hyde Park to witness the launch of Field of Dreams – South Africa’s very first authentic high-proof 72% Absinthe from Jorgensen’s Distillery.

I’ve been chatting to Roger & Dawn Jorgensen, the producers of Field of Dreams, and they kindly agreed to share the secret of how to make absinthe with you and I. Of course it’s high-level and I wouldn’t try this at home…

Versailles Farm in the Cape Winelands - where all the Absinthe action happens!

Before I begin, it’s important to recognise the difference between French/Swiss absinthe and Czech absinthe. The former is the darling of the Belle Époque and the latter is a more modern knock off. Real Absinthe is a redistillation of fine alcohol in the presence of specific aromatic herbs, most notably Artemisia Absinthium (wormwood) from which Absinthe gets its name. This is followed by a laborious natural colouring process. Fake absinthe uses essences and colourants and rarely contains real wormwood.

One

Roger with a handful of Hyssop

The real challenge with Absinthe is acquiring enough of the right plant material. It takes years. Whilst the complete list and proportion of aromatics is known only to The Still Man, Field of Dreams contains the holy trinity of wormwood, green anise and fennel with earth notes provided by angelica root, calamus root, liquorice root and orris root. The colouring herbs are Melissa, hyssop, wild dagga, wild mint, roman wormwood and angelica leaves, with floral notes provided by Cape buchu and wild rose geranium. So get planting.

Two

Roger carefully double distils dry white wine to make a lightly aromatic spirit at 85% alcohol. This will be used as a base for the Absinthe. Too much flavour will spoil the nuances of the herbs, too little will make the Absinthe flat and uninspiring.

All the herbs organised and standing by

Three

Spirit flowing from the potstill

The 1871 recipe used by Jorgensen’s as inspiration requires them to soak the primary aromatic herbs in the 85% wine spirits for 12 or more hours, add water and then gently distil off the alcohol and all the flavour from the plants. At this stage the young Absinthe is highly fragrant and completely clear and colourless.

Four

Next is the colouring process which also finely tunes and completes the flavour profile. Arrays of fragrant chlorophyll-rich herbs with delicate floral qualities are steeped in the young Absinthe giving it a vibrant natural green hue.

Star Anise is used to flavour other drinks like Jägermeister & Sambuca too

Five

And there you have it!

The final step is enjoyment. Real Absinthe is bottled with very high alcohol content (72%) for technical reasons. It must therefore be adequately diluted before enjoyment: a measure of Absinthe is even called a dose! A ritual has evolved where iced water is dripped into a special glass containing the dose of Absinthe. The addition of water causes a reaction with the abundant oils extracted from the herbs causing it to “louche”, or cloud, with a mesmerising swirl which in turn releases the complex aromas and flavours. Dilute at least 3:1 and sip slowly. Some prefer to sweeten their Absinthe with sugar, but this should not be necessary with a really good example. Three glasses of Absinthe will inspire you and is more than enough to enter your Field of Dreams.

Indeed! The key to good Absinthe is balance of flavours: bitter wormwood vs sweet anise/fennel underpinned by good earth grounding from the roots and with light floral top notes says Roger

That being said all wormwood and many of the other ingredients do contain thujone which is said to be mildly psychoactive and gives Absinthe its different feel and loosens inhibitions (oh yeah!). In the US and EU the thujone levels are monitored and controlled. There is no regulation here in SA but as Roger & Dawn intend to send Field of Dreams far and wide they are complying with foreign best practice. Aaaah!

Visit the Jorgensen’s Distillery web site and even follow them on twitter.

Don’t forget to see them in person at the Food Wine Design Fair!

A couple of weeks ago I received an email informing me that I had cracked the nod to a luncheon celebrating 30 years of Meerlust Rubicon. As you should know by now, I’m quite the Meerlust fan and enjoy their Pinot Noir regularly with a good braai.

Nestled tightly between the Diamond Centre & highway

But this was something different. Something I’ve never had the privilege of attending in the past. The problem though was that I thought I would be surround by glass-swirling-sniffing connoisseurs with their noses in the air as they spoke in some secret society lingo while I just downed the good ol’ sweet nectar for pleasure apposed to science. But I was taken by surprise, especially when I spotted a fellow Mo Bro and started chatting to a couple of people from Pick ‘n Pay, the media, Makro and the legendary Solly Kramer (the man himself).

The event was pretty simple and laid back. We basically sat at a long table setup in one of the galleries, each with a range of Rubicon wines and a notepad.

A range of Rubicon from 1980 - sip and comment!

Chris Williams, the winemaker and all round nice guy, then took us on a blind journey through each of the different glasses in front of us. He spoke about acidity, humidity, weather, age, viruses, tobacco, smokiness and of course alcohol levels – a real education!

Spotted another Mo Bro on good form! Go Jeff!

My personal fascination was the fact that each Rubicon tasted completely different, but all of them had a very distinct spicy undertone – you can even taste it in contrasting cups that are 30 years apart…

Rubicon Showdown: 1980 vs 2010

Do you see how the older wine on the left has a brown tinge to it, while the younger wine from 2010 is rich in colour - still fresh!

The remains of the sweet nectar

After we tasted all the wines, we were treated to an excellent lunch. Pure coincidence that they made my favorite meal:

Lunch with a little Chardonnay will you

As someone from “outside the industry” I stimulated several great conversations about wine marketing, the new generation of wine drinkers and how wine makers plan to take on the growing beer, spirit & champagne producers (if they plan to at all).

Neil Pendock, one of the countries leading independent drinks commentators summed it up on his blog post here with the following quote from Solly Kramer:

“SA wine must catch a wake-up and move their marketing departments to Jo’burg. Look at this bottle of Meerlust Pinot Noir 2009. The wine is great but the label is 1920s. When they launched Rubicon in the early 1980s, their black label was out of the box. Now Chocolate Box makes all the running – pure marketing sells wine.”

In between I had to get a pic with the Meerlust men…

Hannes Myburgh, Eddie Turner, Chris Williams & yours truly

I had a great time with great people at a great venue – but the stars of the day had to be the bottles of Meerlust Rubicon from 1980 (the year I was born in too BTW), truly legendary stuff!

Star of the day: Meerlust Rubicon turns 30!

Visit Meerlust and compliment your next bottle of wine with a mouthwatering rosemary balsamic steak marinade!

From 26 – 28 November 2010 it’s the first Food Wine Design Fair on the roof-top of the Hyde Park Shopping Centre – celebrating and showcasing what top South Africans are producing in these three fields.

Food. Wine. Design. These are the things that excite me!

I’m told that the 5000 square metre roof-surface (that has views over the east and north of Joburg), will be transformed with tents, theatre lighting, a massive dining area and landscaping to compliment!

How is this event different?

For starters it’s the first event to combine food, wine and design – all lifestyle areas that converge on high quality production and craftsmanship. Second, each producer has been hand-picked and the number of participants has been limited to focus on the best and most unique. In the third instance, by creating the venue on the roof of the Hyde Park Shopping centre we can all do some night-time shopping with an atmosphere that no convention centre could ever achieve.

Event Highlight!

Jorgensen’s Distillery, run by Roger and Dawn Jorgensen, will be launching South Africa’s first absinthe!

Our Field of Dreams Absinthe which is set for release in mid November 2010, is distilled in small batches from home grown organic herbs, especially wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) together with anise, fennel and angelica in the finest traditions of the French masters – to an 1871 recipe. The colouring herbs used to create the vibrant green hue and complete the complex flavour profile feature hyssop, melissa and roman wormwood.

Sadly Roger & Dawns Field of Dreams Absinthe doesn’t make you hallucinate, see green fairies, paint like Degar, write like Hemingway or be as wild as Oscar Wilde – but who know what it will unleash?!

Enter our Jorgensen’s Distillery Giveaway Now!

Winex is taking place at the Sandton Convention Centre this week. Last night the girlfriend, the french guy and I headed over to see what all the fuss was about. We paid our R100, got our glasses, walked in and quickly realised there were two distinct types of people there:

1. Boozers – people like me, who are lured in by interesting wine estate names, cool branding and the search for my favorite merlot.
2. Aficionados – those okes who spent at least 20 minutes at each stand, sampling each wine in detail using the calculated method below:

Excuse me ma'am, do you...

As I’m sure you know, there are only a few rare occasions when it’s okay to ask a lady if she spits or swallows. Winex is one of them. Just look at how many people where there at 8pm on a Thursday night:

Drinkers unite for the good of the grape!

I don’t believe it’s humanly possible to sample something from each and every stand at the event – there are just too many! So a couple of highlights include my personal favorite on the night…

Shiraz by A Few Good Men

It was also great to bump into my friends from Meerlust. There was no need to fight the crowds for a taste of their sweet nectar cause I’m fully stocked back at the pad. You should be too!

Moving right along, best branding and bottle concept went to these guys (although it tasted terrible to me)…

Push me to the floor... laa laa laa laa la la

At the end of the evening we lined up by one of the many breathalysers to see if we were okay to drive. I scored a worthy 0.03 on the cock-eyed-scale. Surprisingly under the legal limit (0,05) considering the way I felt!

aaand BLOW...

Don’t drink and drive now folks… and visit the Winex website here - you can still go tonight!

So I borrowed a chicken recipe from Simply Delicious, SA’s Blog Awards Winner in the Food & Wine category. I’ve got to say that it turned out to be one of the tastiest chicken dishes I’ve ever cooked! Here is how I did it…

First I prepared all the ingredients which cost less than R100 from the Spar up the road.

Preparation is key. Write that down.

• 4 chicken leg portions
• 1/2 cup Olive oil
• Juice of 2 Lemons
• 1tbsn Dijon mustard
• 2tbsn Chopped Parsley
• 1tbsn thyme leaves
• 1tbsn chopped Sage
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• Salt & Black pepper

I mixed everything you see above into a bowl and stirred it up with a fork until the mustard and olive oil were completely fused. Then I drizzled it over the chicken leg portions and left it to marinade for about 30 minutes while the oven heated up. Be sure to turn the chicken a couple of times so that the marinade is absorbed – you don’t want to miss a spot!

4 little polkas sucking up the juicy herb marinade

Initially I was going to braai using the twin-fire method I used here, but instead I grilled the food in the oven for about 30 minutes and then turned on the fan setting to make the skin slightly golden brown.

mm... mmm... mmmm... Perfection!

As you can see it came out brilliantly. And it tasted even better than it looks! I washed it down with a well-matched glass of Meerlust Pinot Noir – just right with grilled meats like chicken or salmon.

Be sure to visit Simply delicious for more recipe’s.

You’ve either seen these faces, read their posts or heard their names being thrown around town. You haven’t? Luckily you’ve come across this post then…

I’ve rounded up 14 diverse South African bloggers (including myself) to give you an insight into our favorite feasting activities – combining our passion for blogging with something we all need to maintain life and growth. Food.

Don’t hesitate. Get all the information on where and what’s cooking from the blogs you shouldn’t be ignoring!

Feed your curiosity! Click here to see the list…