Greetings Vondelingers

Well, that was quite a world cup! My consumption of Vondeling wines definitely doubled during England’s games as we had to sit through those nerve-wracking performances. We were 22 minutes away from the final when Croatia got their equaliser in the semi-finals. So very heart breaking. But, back here the rains have been very good so far this winter. See the picture from April compared to a couple of days ago below.

July 1
 A very dry dam, photographed in April 2018.
 July 2
 Our dam after the beautiful and much-needed winter rains.

 A few weeks ago Matthew and I were interviewed on Hashtag Radio, which also streamed live on Facebook. We were cautiously nervous to begin with, but it all went well and our host, Jon Meinking, enjoyed our choice of songs, among them God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols, The Boys Are Back In Town by Thin Lizzy and Heroes by David Bowie. Matt chose Dusty Springfield and Guns ‘n’ Roses (pretty dodgy!)

July 3

Tim Atkin, British Master of Wine, came to visit and tasted ours and our neighbours’ wines here in the Vondeling farmhouse. He seemed to have enjoyed Vondeling wines and we look forward to his annual South African Report.

July 4
 Tim Atkin MW flanked by our winemakers, Emile and Matthew.

Scores came back from the highly regarded American wine critic, James Suckling, with some fantastic results. No less than 7 of our wines rated 90 points or higher in his annual report on South African wines.

Chardonnay 2017 – 93 points

Babiana 2016 – 91 points 

Monsonia 2015 – 91 points 

Baldrick Shiraz 2016 – 91 points 

Cabernet Sauvignon 2015 – 90 points 

Sweet Carolyn 2017 – 90 points 

Pinotage 2015 – 90 points 
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Hope everyone had a lovely holiday break and have a great month until  the next newsletter.

Sorry the Croats didn’t put one over the French! 

Take care, 

Julian