An active day at Graham Beck for the Circle of Excellence members

The Circle of Excellence members are a group of cellar workers who have been winners and finalists in Winetech's SA Cellar Worker programme, which has been running since 2009. The current members were invited to a workshop at Graham Beck on Friday 17th November and I joined them for a full Graham Beck experience with Mr Bubbles himself (Pieter Ferreira of course), and winemaker Pierre de Klerk.

We were taken through the process of making MCC and its background, as well as a tour through the cellar which is undergoing construction as they are refocusing on only making Cap Classique in future and not still wine.

The day was ended off with an interesting tasting and then a very hands-on competition to see who could degorge bubbly manually, without losing too much of the precious bubble in the bottle. This process is called 'à la volée' and Gerrie Grootboom from Roodezandt walked away with the top spot, losing very little bubble and also kept his bottle really clean.

The ever-generous Graham Beck handed each of the top 3 with a magnum of their bubbly - a fabulous early Xmas prezzie!