Match of the week

Seafood pizza and Craven The Firs Syrah

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on February 1 2016 at 08:21

A full-flavoured red and seafood? Doesn’t sound like the kind of pairing that would work but as ever it depends on the wine and how the dish is prepared.

The pizza was one of a range of gourmet pizzas at a great little restaurant called Burrata at The Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock, Capetown we visited on Friday night with a couple of winemakers, Mick and Jeanine Craven of Craven Wines (Mick also makes wine at Mulderbosch) and Gavin Bruwer of B Vintners who also makes the Raats Family wines.

I ordered a di Mare (prawns, squid and chili aioli) just because I was curious to see what it was like. Thanks to the garlic it was quite punchy so easily able to handle a red.

The syrah (a 2015 and definitely a syrah rather than a shiraz) was Mick and Jeanine’s, a really delicious bright juicy example with a good whack of the white pepper and spice that characterises wines from the northern Rhône. Amazingly it was only 12.5%, which is typical of a trend to lower alcohol wines among the new generation of South African wine producers (though Mick is in fact an Aussie!). Apparently it’ll be hitting the UK sometime in the spring.

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