As international wines become collector’s items never to be drunk, Melvyn Minnaar wonders what’s happening in the local industry They’re tasted well enough, most likely from little tulip-shaped tasting glasses. But then they’re deftly ejected from the taster’s mouth into what has been known as a spittoon since Queen Victoria. The examiner moves on to […]

In the flssigas brot brewing process, yeast is added to malt and hops (and other secret, I-could-tell-you-but-then-I’d-have- to-kill-you ingredients) to convert the complex sugars into alcohol, splitting the world of beer into two distinct styles which are determined by where in the brewing vessel the yeast ferments. So top-fermented beers, or ales, date from the […]

Andrew Worsdale sampled some of the products and ideas on offer at the Second Film and TV Market, held in Cape Town If a tidal wave had hit Cape Town’s Long Street last week, most of the South African movie industry would have been wiped out. More than 1 500 local producers, directors, professional schmoozers […]

Peta Thornycroft Glen Goosen, former director of investigations at the truth commission, has formally complained about a programme broadcast on SAfm last week which contained an interview with his former boss, Dumisa Ntsebeza. In the programme, TRC in Review, Ntsebeza accused Goosen of being part of an incompetent investigation and suggested race played a part […]

For a more critical analysis of imported beer, read BJ’s Imported Beer Drinkers’ Guide (R24,95). BJ Lankwarden, a self- confessed beer lover, has catalogued all the beer imported into South Africa. It has a breakdown of the beer’s origin, colour, alcohol percentage, strength, style of beer, a brief summary of its flavour, and, in some […]

From humble beginnings as a worker’s drink beer has become not only respectable, but hip, writes David Shapshak Lazy, hazy sun-filled days, beaches and bare flesh: these are the images that summer and beer conjure up – and rugby, let’s not forget where we are. But beer was once the little people’s drink, the common […]

FRIDAY, 11.00AM: SPRINGBOK scrumhalf Joost van der Westhuizen is considering leaving the Blue Bulls after playing for them for the last seven seasons, because he feels his game is suffering. Van der Westhuizen said he is fearful of losing his Bok place ahead of the 1999 World Cup finals. “At this stage I don’t have […]

The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary gave us their own alternative key words for the past two decades: 1978 BMX, Teletext 1979 Space Invaders 1980 Reaganomics 1981 Walkman 1982 Exocet 1983 Star Wars 1984 Aids 1985 Yuppie 1986 Perestroika 1987 Freemarket, Black Monday 1988 Lager lout 1989 Poll tax 1990 Global warming 1991 Citizen’s […]

Melvyn Minnaar Together with vineyard virtuosos like Gyles Webb of Thelema, Beyers Truter of Kanonkop and Norma Ratcliff of Warwick, a new generation of winemakers is gaining more and more attention. At Stellenzicht, originally almost a second label to Neethlingshof, a confident and sometime controversial Andr van Rensburg is making wines for a new era. […]