TASTE THE TERROIR: Every bottle tells a tale – sip, savour, celebrate South Africa

Angry letter writers, hold your fire. I am not saying that matches made with indigenous and/or heritage ingredients, flavour combinations, recipes and cooking methods never occur. 

Just that they are still quite rare. Which is weirdly self-defeating given that wine businesses worldwide sell relatively similar products and almost all other wine-producing countries make much more use of their national dishes to create competitive advantage.

Where South African recipes are suggested as accompaniments to wine, the focus frequently falls on the Cape creole fusion food genres of boerekos, Cape Dutch and Cape Malay. Don’t get me wrong – the aforementioned culinary cultures are deeply delicious and work well with wine. 

Since most of our wine is made in the Western Cape, it makes sense to start there. Sadly, that is almost always where it ends. Even within the winelands, the way ingredients and recipes are described and attributed is often inaccurate. The failure to properly recognise and celebrate the contribution of San-Khoe flavours is painfully apparent.

Omission is not a neutral act, and it is not only San-Khoe-descendant communities and cuisines that are underrepresented absent within the current food and wine conversations. Almost all food pairing suggestions operate under the misconception that everything beyond Robertson is a gastronomic terra nullius. A few pioneering sommeliers are beginning to include the plants of faraway lands (such as Limpopo and Zimbabwe) in their tasting notes and flavour wheels, but even these worthy initiatives very seldom extend beyond back-of-a-bottle, sensory definitions.

Categorising in concentric circles works for wine anorak theorists but is not very helpful for those seeking real-meal, replicable pairing proposals with which to have a lovely evening of eating and drinking. I recently saw a wine brand website that had gone to admirable lengths to describe their Sauvignon Blanc with reference to indigenous ingredients including blackjack and buchu, but then curtly suggested that the wine “complements seafood, sushi, pasta, chicken and veal dishes”.

Occasionally, Heritage Day promotions acknowledge the eating habits of provinces beyond the Western Cape. When attempts are made, the failure to correctly use even the most basic ingredient terminology is telling. Those writing the copy seem unfamiliar with the tastes and textures involved. Food words from South African official languages other than English or Afrikaans are misused more often than they are correctly applied.

One big brand currently has a Heritage Day web page suggesting that: “If you are planning on popping some chicken on the fire – perhaps a spatchcock, sosaties or umleqwa (free range chicken) – then a Sauvignon Blanc is the ideal wine pairing option.” 

To translate “umleqwa” as free range is, at least partially, to miss the point. Umleqwa is an isiXhosa language word literally meaning a chicken that runs about/that you chase. It refers to birds that my friend Mashau calls “those chickens that fight and eat frogs”. It holds within it an acknowledgement of a bird that is older, leaner and tougher than a plump, young supermarket “free range” fowl. 

Such meat must be stewed long and slow, not braaied, if it is to release its full-flavoured, strong-boned, gamey glories. Because it has so little fat, it is unlikely to love being paired with the ripe fruit, fresh acidity of most Sauvignon Blancs.

I don’t want to be snotty about errors and ignore the progress that has been made. The situation is better than it once was. And I do know that South African winemakers have been through extraordinarily tough times in recent years. Anyone still in business is a superhero worthy of respect. Innovation is expensive and its results are per force uncertain, but without it we will not foster a sense of customer preference via provenance. 

Vague suggestions of sushi and pasta are unlikely to produce the sorts of vivid, place-specific memories that engender loyal, repeat consumption.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that an increasing number of South African chefs and winemakers are working together to create authentic, innovative, delicious pairings that recognise South African cuisine in all its diversity. Daily Maverick is celebrating this development with a new monthly column highlighting proudly South African food and wine epicurean experiences at all price points – because it is not enough to have a few fine dining modernists working in the uber-upmarket space. There needs to be trickle down into all sectors of the hospitality industry.

This, the inaugural column, describes an event at which Andile Somdaka, chef-patron of Eziko restaurant in Midrand, Gauteng, prepared a magnificent meal matched with Mullineux Family Wines from the Swartland region. The lucky diners – a group of students from a US business school – were treated to an evening of terroir-specific tales and tastes.

Chef Somdaka is a culinary classicist. His bistro style eatery doesn’t serve avant-garde foodie fiddles. He respects time-honoured Eastern Cape recipes, remaining true to the provenance and soul of the amaXhosa cooks who came before him.

He also farms indigenous ingredients and rears heritage chickens, many of which make it on to his menu. In discussion with his friend, sommelier Moses Magwaza, Somdaka saw superb synergies between Mullineux’s old vine ethos and his own enthusiasm for heritage vegetables. He observed: “It’s about growing plants that know the land they are on. Plants that are adapted to suit its conditions. Not just to barely survive but to thrive. To take sometimes hard environments and produce powerful flavours. Drawing strength from the land by recognising and respecting what came before. Making that strength part of what will come afterwards.”

The event began with a brandy-based, traditional Xhosa ukuphahla (libation). The Eastern Cape ancestral realm was introduced to the international visitors and vice versa. In so doing, respectful connections were created across time and space – making the meal so much more than a few pleasant sips and swallows.

Platters of linqoba wild earth almonds and ramekins of umqa (intyabotyi indigenous melon and maize melange) were brought out (to) ukubamisa umoya. Literally “to hold the wind” in the isiXhosa language, the phrase is used to describe a small snack that precedes a meal. The chef accompanied his aperitifs with foraging and farming memories from his Ezingcuka village childhood. There was an impromptu eulogy for “my loyal companion Lion, the best hunting dog who ever lived” and a telling of “the time I nearly died falling out a tree while foraging for fruits”.

Yesidlo main course dishes drawn from Somdaka’s time spent working for President Nelson Mandela included umngqusho (samp and beans), umsila wenkomo (oxtail) and umleqwa heritage chicken with isonka samanzi (steamed bread). Sommelier Magwaza assisted with pairings from the Mullineux Kloof Street range. The chef’s inhouse, perfectly pétillant, rhemere/gemere (ginger beer) was served to designated drivers.

Everything on offer was exquisite but it was the umqa and the umleqwa courses that most completely captured the chef’s wine and food philosophy. ⁠Intyabontyi (Citrullus lanatus) is the Xhosa name for the precursors of modern watermelons. Variously referred to in different areas of South Africa as t’sama, makataan, bitterboela, lerotse and ibhece, it has pale yellow flesh and ruby red seeds. Understated, elegant flavours overlap with those of melon, pumpkin and cucumber.

Cooked with freshly ground, homegrown maize meal into a silken buttercup-coloured porridge, the dish behaved beautifully with Mullineux Old Vine Kloof Street Chenin Blanc (2022). The subtle, refreshing sweetness of intyabontyi was accentuated by the wine’s tropical fruit flavours while the maize meal’s slight smokiness provided delightful depth. 

While wine was not part of Somdaka’s early Eastern Cape experience; he made the match because “these are both timeless tastes that can only come from this land. They feel right together. Eating this food. Drinking this wine. Bringing them together it reminds our guests that they are with us on a South African flavour journey that is greater than one meal. We are showing them something of who we are.”

Isonka samanzi (steamed bread) dipped into the voluptuous, amber umhluzi meat juices of an umleqwa traditional chicken is one such identity defining, timeless taste. Cooked long and slow, the lean, strong-boned, firm-fleshed umleqwa became deep, rich, tenderness. The meat came from several badly behaved cockerels who had been disrupting the pecking order outside the Somdaka family’s home hen house.

The older the bird, the richer the sauce, and these antisocial fellows had been fighting and crowing up a storm for many moons. The surrounding umhluzi was wonderful. With a viscosity that falls between the English words/concepts of broth and gravy, umhlulzi is a southern Africa signature sauce. It is often savoured and sipped, served on the side in a teacup.

In Italy they call the act of savouring leftover sauce with a piece of bread or a finger “fare la scarpetta”. Literally to make the shoe, the phrase holds within it not only the frugality of waste not want not, but also the joy of eating and serving a meal so good that no smudge must be left behind on the plate or in the pot. 

AmaXhosa cooks and eaters refer to “umncind’oginyis’ingqwiq’ovuzisizinkcwe”. The word umncindo is derived from the verb ukuncinda (to dip solid food such as bread or pap into a liquid like egg or gravy). Oginyisa comes from the verb ukuginya (to swallow). Ovuzisizinkcwe is something that induces salivation and ingwiqi relates to the abstract pleasure of imagining the consumption of a satisfying taste. What we have here is the Xhosa version of Proust’s Madeleine moment. As Chef Somdaka said: “It’s almost untranslatable but I suppose I would say something like ‘the mere thought of sauce-soaked bread makes my mouth water as it yearns for the soul-satisfying taste’.”

Regardless of our mother tongue, we all know this fundamental, soul-satisfying food behaviour. Everything we were, are and will be as human beings is right there in the ancient, adapted muscle memory of fingers and thumb coming together to rip then dip bread into mellow umami-perfection. Every culinary culture has a dough recipe designed to perform this task. For Chef Somdaka that bread is isonka samanzi. Chewy and firm yet airy, its interior texture has evolved to symbiotically and simultaneously soak up and support.

*Paired with smooth, light, Swartland Rouge Kloof Street (2021) the balanced blend of soft tannins in the wine placed the purity of the food flavours at the forefront of the eating experience. Enhancing without overpowering. The wine’s red fruit and earthy undertones not only embraced the umleqwa’s glorious gamey taste and texture, but also the yeasty, slightly sweet, steamed bread as it made magic mopping up umhluzi. 

We now know that in Ezingcuka village they call that sort of soul satisfying, timeless, delicious moment “umncind’oginyis’ingqwiq’ovuzisizinkcwe”. 

Great meals are made when food and wine communicate, rather than ignoring or talking over each other. Mullineux and Chef Somdaka created a superb, South African specific culinary conversation. There are many more tales to tell. So, let’s. DM

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