Inspired by acorn-induced headaches, slumbering students and slowtown camaraderie, City of Oaks is an exhibition where Fanakalo, a design and illustration studio just up the road from the Slee Gallery in Dorp Street, pays homage to their humble, yet historic surroundings with limited edition prints, lasercuts and designs. With the aid of some hyperactive squirrels, caffeine from the various local coffee shops….. and hopefully some aircon by the time that you read this, Fanakalo will let you see the Eikestad through their never-too-serious eyes.
Join us at 18:30 on the 1st of March at 101 Dorp Street for a glass of wine (…duh) and some nuts… Ends 14 March.
The great wines help — many of them on a par with top international labels. Over the years I’ve seen how South African wine-making has changed; for a while, some of the more earthy vintages lost a bit of character as they chased international markets, but they are back to producing really interesting wines. It’s well worth dropping in to some of the boutique wineries for a tasting. I’m a particular fan of what is happening with the chenin blanc grape at Badenhorst in Swartland. I also like the distinctive and characterful labels coming from Eben Sadie’s winery in Swartland, and those of Boekenhoutskloof.
The challenge was to create a logo that can print very small and still be legible. For the website we used a large amount of copy to become part of the layout/design, we ended up doing a newspaper vibe with big text and halftone sepia images.
The De Kleine Wijn Koöp is a circle of friends, made up of sommeliers and graphic artists. As we deal with wine on a daily basis, every now and then we stumble upon a wine too small to fit into a particular winemaker’s series or simply too strange and unique to suit the commercial market. We then buy in these wines and dress it in a more ‘flip-flops and boardshorts’ than ‘black-tie’ fashion.
De Kleine Wijn Koöp is a playground for our creative expression, outside of the conventions of the wine-shop’s shelf. Unique and once-off wine offerings…
“Eric Todd’s products are produced in the picturesque Elgin Valley by a passionate food lover and farmer, using only the best fruit and chillies from his own crop. The idea for the manufacturing of these sauces was inspired by dear friends and great food connoisseurs, Eric and Winsome Todd from Nelspruit.”
The Bollinger Exceptional Wine Service Award has been established to bring focus and recognition of achievement to the growing group of professional wine waiters in South Africa.
How much do wine bottle labels really influence which wines you buy?
“So how do you choose wine when faced with a wall of bottles in your supermarket or liquor outlet? If you’re not simply grabbing the cheapest bottle you can find (or, conversely, the most expensive, with the misconception that price equals quality), do you go with the tried-and-tested brands, perhaps even the ones your parents drank? Or the brands that advertise widely?”
A good friend’s family owns Yonder Hill wine farm. He took the pics and we built the site: http://www.yonderhill.co.za/
“The cellar was built in 1993, but greatly modernised four years later. The barrels, of French oak, are kept underground to allow for gravity-feeding and the cellar can house up to 800 of these containers, each with a capacity of 225 litres. All three red wines produced at Yonder Hill - the Inanda and Merlot - are matured here.”
After going on for 2 years, our studio would have never imagined that we’d be here by now. We really attribute a lot of our success to being featured on The Dieline.
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