The Mash Tun is all
about craft beer and organic wine. To be
honest I’ve never heard of the place but they’ve been doing a lot of
advertising on Facebook for their “Gin
& Tonic Festival” being held on 30 January. I’m very new to the G&T scene so when I
first noticed the event I thought it would be a good way to get out for the day
with friends and do some experimenting.
As with most things people take their time deciding whether they want
to attend an event or not and we missed out on early bird tickets. And then disaster struck, we missed out on
normal priced tickets as well. Tickets
sold out super quick. After much hunting
and emails flying around, Mash Tun let everyone know that they were releasing
more tickets in early January. What a
relief!!
While looking at booking for the “Gin & Tonic Festival” we noticed
that they were hosting a “Food and Gin Pairing” evening. This was held on a Friday night and tickets
were very reasonable. They’ve since decided
to host another “Food and Gin Pairing” evening since the evening was such a
success.
The venue is a little misleading, we had no clue how to get into the
building but eventually found our way.
The deco is pretty rustic but looks cool. There’s an outside area where you can enjoy
the warmer weather or where the smokers get relegated to during functions.
We started the evening off with champagne from Blaauwklippen
Vineyards, it was really smooth and light, a very enjoyable drink. I’m not much of a champagne drinker, but I
enjoyed this one. Russ who owns and runs
The Mash Tun explained how things came about and what the evening would entail.
The night was then handed over to Rolf Zeitvogel from Blaauwklippen and
Triple Three Gin. Rolf is very German
and through the night we had a giggle over some of his pronunciation. We could not understand what he was talking
about when he said they were bringing around a refreshing drink to cleanse our
palates. We eventually figured out he
was saying that it was a cucumber based drink.
For the life of me I thought he was talking about some exotic bean that
I’d never heard about :)
After the cucumber drink there was starters of cucumber with salmon and
100% Juniper Berries Gin. We were
surprised by the quantity of the drink, when you think of a tasting you think
of maybe a shot of gin but it was a ball shaped glass full of gin and mix. I can’t remember what the gin was mixed with
but it was delicious J The second course was a battered springbok
ball with tomato and basil and African Botanicals Gin. This drink was pretty strong, well stronger
than the first one anyway. We later
found out that they started off light and each time increased the strength of
the drinks. The third course was raspberry
filled macaroons with Citrus Infusion Gin.
This was also pretty nice. It’s
amazing how each drink was infused with various flavours and how different they
each tasted.
My only complaints would be that the food was definitely too little, and
by the end the drinks were very strong.
I was driving that evening so had to watch how much I had to drink. But all in all was a pretty cool evening out
with my friends and am super excited for the “Gin & Tonic Festival” coming
up at the end of the month.
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