There are some iconic things in life that everybody needs to do once before they die. You know – things like swimming with wild dolphins. Seeing your favourite painting in real life. Getting lost in Venice. Drinking wine in the country where the grape was grown. Keeping a pet. And attending a Swedish crayfish party.
Click here for a full portionSaturday Snapshots #211
Colour by the bottle – Conservatoire des Ocres, Rousillon – June 2012
Click here for a full portionVisiting the Vaucluse: Le Conservatoire des Ocres and Silvain nougat makers
When I was a kid, my most burning desire was to own a brand new, pristine box of Colleen coloured pencil crayons. I loved their shiny hexagonal surfaces and their iconic box (reassuringly unchanged for a good 30 years I see!) – and I can credit them with teaching me the names of a couple of the more obscure colours. I could tell my burnt sienna from common or garden brown long before I had any idea that sienna was a natural iron oxide pigment.
Click here for a full portionEasy mustard-crusted fish fillets
On the airport bus in Malmö a couple of weeks ago, I was seated in front of a group of twentysomethings whose clipped vowels betrayed their expensive education. I kind of filtered out the first part of their conversation which was all about where they’d been on their weekend in Malmö, but paid a little more attention when they started talking about their future travel plans.
Click here for a full portionSaturday Snapshots #210
Eye spy – London South Bank, August 2012
Click here for a full portionJacob’s Creek wine dinner at No. 35 @ The Hempel
One of the great things about living abroad is that it opens up a while new world of wine enjoyment. Living in a wine-producing country such as South Africa, I drank almost exclusively South African wine. And why not: it’s generally of a very high standard, and drinking the imported stuff is hilariously expensive – so it’s a no-brainer. After a few months in the UK, I decided to get to the bottom of what all the fuss was about with Chablis, Rioja and Bordeaux and so I started exploring the wines of other countries. It has been an interesting learning curve and a very pleasurable way to develop a taste yardstick by which to measure and place your own country’s wines in the larger family tree of world wine. But what I find most interesting of all is that even after 10 years of drinking wines from regions all over the Old World, my palate still shows a distinct preference for the fruit and accessibility of New World wines.
Click here for a full portion
