Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Cooked gets all tied up in Joburg

This week at the Cooked HQ was a quiet one and for anyone that's ever been to visit us - that is as rare as hen's teeth. The reason for this was that our entire office was up in the Northern half of the country orchestrating the filming of a set of TV commercials. It's the first time that Cooked has embarked on producing TV ads and together with Creative Workshop, Cooked in Africa was proud to be a part of the production from start to finish.
Special thanks goes to Sunel Haasbroek, Calvin Hayward, Wesley (Skunk), Zann Wienand, Andre Beumer, Brent Webb, Malcolm Stone, Chad de Klerk, John-Sebastian Esongo, Nerine Pienaar, Merina Geyer, Hansie Sedibe, Minuche Snyman, Cassius Lucani, and cast: Bongani Ndyalvane, Ursula Hogg, Gunda Roodt, and Julian Louw.

Exploring the Vine Boys meet Madame May-Eliane Deloncquaisane

A woman dubbed 'the queen of the wine industry' graciously accepted our invitation to feature her in an episode of Exploring the Vine covering women in the South African wine industry. Madame hails from the Bordeaux winelands in France where she single-handedly changed the face of the French wine industry. Find out what makes this extraordinary woman tick on episode seven of Exploring the Vine.

An Afternoon with Vince Colby

Director Rio Allen and his trusted team of 'film-ous' from Catchlight Media (part of the Cooked Collective) went out one Sunday to meet and capture a day in the life of South African music legend, Vince Colby, and his wife Patty. We had the privilege of being the first to gain insight into this man's life - a true symbol of strength in his current battle with cancer.
We have not known the extent of Colby's career up until this point. Watch as his friends join him as he does what he loves most - sing.
To see this rare insight into Colby's life, watch MNET HD or watch this space for future uploads.

Further Exploring the Vine...

Howard, James and Stuart have just completed their eighth episode of Exploring the Vine and, so far, they have done everything from abseiling off Paarl rock with some of South Africa's hottest winemakers to finding South Africa's oldest vine in the desolate planes of the Karoo.
This week saw the boys attempting to catch a fish in time for their snoek braai with South Africa's 'Mr Pinotage', Beyers Truter. Either their bait was sub-standard or the boys simply had no idea how to cast a line because not one of them was able to secure a snoek in time.
Needless to say Beyers wasn't very impressed.

Blog Update 18 August

It's been a while since our last post and we apologise. A large group of wild meerkats attacked our internet connection while alien forces abducted and probed our entire office. Well that, and the small fact that we literally have had no time between completing a cook book, three TV series, a slew of commercials, short documentaries, a wedding, pitches, conferences and making coffee. But here we are, or here I am, about to fill you in on what has happened in the past couple of deadly silent weeks.
Or did I just do that?

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Exploring the Vine: tasting some of SA's best

Sorry it’s taken so long to write another post, everything here has been a little hectic, so this is some of what we have been upto:

James, Howard and Stuart have finally abandoned their 7-day work weeks for the road in search of the best wines South Africa has to offer. Starting off the three spent the weekend at The Countries’ most popular wine festival – The Wacky Wine Weekend in Robertson. (Due to a competition that James had lost in the previous episode he was designated driver but he soon worked his around this one). There was rain forecast for the weekend but this didn’t deter the guys as they took full advantage of this famous Southern Cape festival.

In the episode that followed the guys decided that they were going to get a little cultural (they were really hoping to get their paws on some vintages that aren’t available in anywhere else) as they went in search of the oldest Vines in South Africa, which ended up taking them on a crazy tour, criss-crossing the Southern Cape- beginning in the centre of Cape Town, the guys then went to Groot Constantia – aouth Africa’s oldest wine estate, then Stellenbosch, where amongst other things they met with the godfather of South African wine, Spatz Sperling and finally they landed up in quite far North in Calvinia in the Klein Karoo, where some unlikely discoveries unfolded...

In the next episode the guys go to the Bastille festival in Franschhoek and look for some of the more unconventional names in wine, they visited Cabriere and chatted to their poetic Cellar Master Achim von Armin, later the three took part in a barrel rolling competition, in which James almost impaled himself. Next weekend the boys will meet up with some more big names in South African wine, who too have alternate approaches to the wine making process..