Sensory Food & drink experience: The Drift Wines and Private Collection

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The Drift Farm in the Overberg, South Africa,  is a place of extreme weather and raw elements which produces exceptional grapes. Bruce Jack, owner and wine maker, makes astonishing wines here.

He tasked Eat Design to create a launch with a difference.

Eat Design collaborated with top chef Harald Bresselschmidt of Aubergine restaurant in Cape Town, held at the specialised wine and food pairing space, Auslese. A beautifully renovated historic building in Hope street in Cape Town.

Concept
– To bring The Drift to Auslese and create an experiential evening to showcase the spectacular wines.
– To showcase other touchstone wines that Bruce Jack has made throughout his life from all over the world in an interesting way – 8 other wines including brandy and muscat.

Experiential Design Elements
‘Watercolour’ painting: I painted a map of the world in red wine from the Bruce Jack collection – it was upside down and Africa was made larger – most of the wines were made here and the fact that Africa is at the ‘top of the world’.
Programme: A programme was designed, circular in shape and when folded, represented the pyramid at the entrance of The Drift Farm. It showcased all the wines from around the world, the menu and The Drift wines, including the painting, labyrinth and rooster design.
Labyrinth: There is a labyrinth on The Drift Farm – we built one at Auslese to represent it and guests walked it and visited wine ‘stations’ to taste the various wines.
Sound: Sounds were recorded on The Drift. The wind, the wind in the trees, birds and footsteps of walking on stones around the farm. This was played as guests sat down and Bruce introduced The Drift Farm.
Weather: We created a ‘wind’ installation – stone coloured light fabric draped, sewn and cut with spotlights and fans to create movement.
Smell: We isolated certain elements in 2 of the wines during the fine dining 4-course meal.
– The ‘Moveable Feast’ which Harald paired with an amazing fragrant curry as the elements in the wine are cinnamon, curry leaves, chilli, pepper, star anise. We presented guests with a little mortar of whole and ground spices to play with and understand the nose and flavour of the wine.
– ‘The Gift Horse’ has vanilla and buchu elements in it – I tied a little stem of buchu (picked on The Drift) to a fresh vanilla pod and this was hung over each glass of wine. The guests were encouraged to engage with it and identify the flavours in the wine.
Raw materials:
– White marble stones were collected, which is specific to this region and quite a brilliant white. They were placed in geometric glass bowls that hung above the guests heads, as well as singular rocks with holes in them.
– Fynbos picked on the farm was used all over the tables and window sills in beautiful glass bottles.
Icon:
A rooster is the icon of The Drift Farm, I superimposed it onto a base plate and each guest had a golden figurine of the rooster at their name place.
Food:
Harald created an unbelievable 4-course fine dining menu for the Drift Farm wines as well as 8 bites to pair with the other 8 touchstone wines (4 savoury at the beginning of the evening served as canapes and 4 desserts after the meal). He has an innate talent in the pairing of food and wine and he utilised some unique ingredients like sea urchin and the fallow deer that roam freely on The Drift’s neighbouring farm.

It was both an honour and a pleasure to work with Harald and Bruce on this beautiful project.
The Drift Farm also produces the finest raw honey, organic vegetables and large scale organic white onions. Read more about it on their website.

Photographs by Retha Ferguson.