cooking competition time

One day to go for the Nordic chef of the year competition that will be held at Foodexpo in Herning Denmark.

The Swedish chefs association are sending Martin Hansen as senior and  Pi Nghi Thanh Le as junior and wild card.

The training for this guys have been  tough with lot of challenges regarding the mystery baskets that I have put on to the test just like they will find at the competition.

All of us are prepared and ready to go, I will also be one of the judges at this event and will keep you all informed by my Twitter as @draganunic so ad me up for news.

To my US friends

Dear readers in the USA, I’m thrilled and amazed that so many of you are following my blog and that you find my life interesting to read about, I would love to hear from you all and to receive some feedback of what you want me to write about and for me to know you out there.

Please send me an e-mail on dragan@unictaste.se I would appreciate that tremendously

I’m raising my glass to you all

Dragan

South Africa and great wines

The winemakers in South Africa are making some absolutely great wines that in many cases are on top in the world of wines.

The problem is that the importers are focusing on bland wines without personality and identity just focusing on the lower prise range, at least here in Sweden.

People in Sweden love the S-A wines and prefer this in many cases when they are buying in systembolaget shops (monopoly crap) and this is what they thing S-A wines are all about.

The problems appear when you talk to restaurants and ask why they do not carry more of the S-A wines on the list, people are not paying for the wines in restaurants due to that they are used to lower quality wines of lower level wines, this are creating a problem in the long run when you talk about the high end wines that are just amazingly good with great value for the buck.

Here are some of my favourite that I tasted recently and I do love them all and wish some more importers will put focus on this high end wines.

South African Pinots are sexy

Can wine be sexy? This is a very interesting question due to that Pinot Noirs use to be called a female wine in the old days when most of the pinots came from burgundy.

Now days when this exiting grape are grown all around the globe with different characters and result my answer is YES, these wines are a sexy, velvety curvy woman in high heels with a bite to it, and I do love most of them J

I just tasted some of the best South African Pinots and I must admit that this style suits me perfectly with broad and bold flavours and the pure identity of the grape, here are my best picks of the tasting.

Bouchard Finlayson Galpin Peak PN

Chamonix Pinot Noir reserve
Paul Cluver PN
Creation PN
Hamilton Russell PN
Vriesenhof PN
Newton Johnson Family Vineyard PN
Catherine Marshall eleven barrel reserve PN and my favourite wine of the day