Vivat Bacchus, Farringdon

A few years ago I had the good fortune to spend 11 days in sunny Cape Town. Ostensibly we were there on a business trip, but in reality we did a lot of lounging around the hotel pool, eating at the finest restaurants, taking in the sights and sounds of Table Mountain and the beaches, and bar-crawling and nightclubbing every single night. Oh and just occasionally we did some work. One of the highlights of that work intensive trip, was the vineyard tour around Stellenbosch where the Acton boy and I were introduced the best wines that SA had to offer courtesy of Lucia - one of the Northerners best friends and then owner of the biggest and by reputation the best wine shop in Stellenbosch. Great days.
Roll on to 2009 and once again I am about to sample the finest wines that SA has to offer, albeit this time at a converted office block in Farringdon (see picture) that is the site of the wonderful Vivat Bacchus. Don't let the exterior put you off. This is place is a wine lover’s (oenophile’s?)idea of heaven with some 18,000 bottles of the finest that South Africa and the rest of the world has to offer.
I was there for a wine-tasting with the Analyst, who accumulates hobbies and new skills like I do hangovers. Her latest is wine, and these tastings are part of her ‘research’, which suits me just fine.
A small group of mostly South Africans, with some Brits and Americans thrown in for good measure settled into the session in which one of the co-owners Gerrie introduced to the delights of several bottles of South Africa’s finest. This was all going just fine, until he started calling on us for comments.
Describing wine is one of the many things missing from my repertoire of skill - something that was confirmed very quickly when I declared that one fine merlot tasted like port (it wasn’t and it didn’t) and another was 'good stuff'.
I then compounded these schoolboy errors by describing one wine as marmalade - based on a comment I had heard the wine master make earlier. Except he had been talking about a Chardonnay and this was a Syrah. Cue rolling of eyes from the Analyst; muffled laughter from the large Afrikaans bloke sat next to me.
Nevertheless we sampled our way through 7, or maybe it was 9, bottles of cracking wine which for £15 represented great value. Everyone was in great spirits and clearly a lot of the people there were regulars as was evident when most people headed downstairs as apparently is tradition, to sample the steak special.
Vivat Bacchus was absolutely buzzing and very busy, particularly for a Monday night, and it is definitely somewhere I will try again both for the wine-tastings, and next time to sample some food.
Hard work I know, but I think I’m up to the challenge.