Departing briefly from the Kenyan theme of this blog, but still retaining an African twist here is a story about a recent visit to Scotland. The purpose of the visit was a family celebration of the parent-in-laws sixtieth wedding anniversary. The location was beautiful Loch Tay, Perthshire, and a revisit to the Ardeonaig Hotel. I say revisit because over the last 40 years or more the family has made occasional visits to this idyllic spot. For much of its life the Ardeonaig Hotel was largely a small fishing lodge with pub attached very unassuming and catered for the needs of the fisherman and hill walker. The hotel fell on bad times during the 1990’s and by the early 2000’s was boarded-up and just about derelict.
As coincidence would have it a South African chef based in London at the time and with a keen interest in salmon fishing visited Ardeonaig. To cut a long story short, Pete Gottgens the South Africa chef decided that there was much potential in Ardeonaig and bought the hotel. From 2002 Pete has embarked upon establishing the Ardeonaig Hotel as one of Scotland’s best small hotels a task I can report he and his staff are well on the way to achieving.
The African connections are two fold. First Pete has from the onset encouraged a steady stream of Africans including from Kenya to work at the hotel. In the beginning this was partly prudence as encouraging qualified Scots to locate to this relatively remote spot proved challenging. Also as a proud African himself, Pete very much wanted to encourage and provide opportunities to his comrades from the continent. Pete was born in Durban, but led an exotic childhood with family living in various southern and east African countries as his parents worked in the field of wildlife and conservation. The African connections and themes are very much part of the hotels character enhanced by Pete’s childhood African photographs and pieces of African objet d’art.
The other connection with Africa is Ardeonaig’s extensive collection of South African wines. Pete first developed his love and extensive knowledge of South African wines while based in the Cape and now claims that Ardeonaig has Europe’s largest collection of South African wines. Having watched the collection grow over the last few years I have no reason to disagree with this claim. I for one have never seen so many cases of Sadie Family Wines, voted Winery of the Year in South Africa’s wine “bible” the Platter Guide 2010, in one place, both the iconic red blend Columella and the white blend Palladius, and I have visited the Sadie Family cellar in Swatland! The connection with the Sadie family is a product of the fact that Pete and Eben Sadie, who with his brother Niko make the family wines, are good friends. Pete has now gone further and commissioned Eben to produce for the Ardeonaig Hotel a special cuvee of the, “the best wine he can make” from the Spanish vineyard enterprise Eben has been working on for the last six years. Perhaps even more off-the-wall, Pete has recently planted an experimental patch of vines in the hotel grounds to see whether he can introduce wine making to a part of Scotland not known for oenology. Either Pete is confident of the effects of global warming, or, is just a wee bit optimistic.
As this is a wine blog, I should report on the South African wines we tried during our stay at Ardeonaig. Really good (as ever) was the Villiera Monro Brut a stylish Method Cape Classic made with half Pinot Noir and half Chardonnay. To link with a semi-Scottish theme, we also drank the Iona Sauvignon Blanc partly because it is one of my favourites, but also the estate is owned and run by the Gunn family, who with such a name you will not be surprised to learn have a Scottish ancestry and thus the name of the estate. The other standout was a magnum of Pinot Noir from the Cape Chamonix Wine Farm. There are some that argue that the verdict is still out on whether the Cape produces really world-class Pinot Noir. While I agree Pinot Noir from the Cape is by definition not Burgundian, some including the Chamonix are really fabulous and in general the Cape’s Pinot Noir’s improve with every vintage.
No comments:
Post a Comment