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Elegant bubbles and divine grub pop the cork for French champagne house

Chocolate pavé, meringue, honeycomb, berry sorbet and strawberry coulis. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

4 Apr 2025

The French champagne house that introduced the idea of brut (dry) champagnes to the world was introduced to the South African market at a lovely dinner by chef Matt Manning at Grub & Vine at the Norval Foundation art museum in Tokai.

Elegant. Lively. Subtle and finely robust with an appealing freshness and liveliness. And that’s just the company.

My daughter and I are among the guests of La Lumière de Pommery, a dinner at Grub & Vine Norval in Tokai to mark the debut of La Maison Pommery, the French champagne house, in South Africa. The event happens in the middle of an extraordinary week for our family, and what are the chances that a man who has played a generous part in it is right here, coincidentally, and is even seated opposite me, even though neither he nor I arranged this in any way.

I’ve written about all that separately, to be published a week hence, but this story is about Pommery champagne, the food of chef Matt Manning, and living life to the brim against a backdrop of magnificent art.

The man opposite me is Ian Downie, a businessman with lots of side interests in the world of food, both at the gastronomic level and in the potjie out in the backyard. It is Wednesday evening and I only met Ian on Monday, but already we are friends, having bonded over a mission of mine to help a friend regain his eyesight, and his own journey to regain his full vision.

Once Ian had dispatched his drivers to ferry my friend around all week, he invited me to lunch at Dias Tavern, where we fell into comfortable friendship and agreed that we have a long road to walk together. With him is similarly new mate Sam Linsell, whose presence was particularly exciting for my daughter, who is a devoted fan of Sam’s Drizzle&Dip.

Where there are people, there is food, where there is food there is wine, and where both are present there is life and the living of it. And tonight we are all living large, because there is something in the air.

Matt Manning of Grub & Vine. (Photo: Tegan Smith Photography)

This, despite that the serving staff are being ever so snoep about their champagne pouring; goodness, these are food and wine people, open a couple more bottles and fill them up. And to pour so sparsely is hardly French anyway; certainly on their Air France flight from Paris two days earlier, my daughter’s family were well oiled by the flight attendants, who kept filling their glasses up like Australians. Maybe there was something in the air up there too.

(The secret is to keep talking and smiling while they pour, distracting them until they realise they’ve poured too much. This I did on Wednesday evening, and it worked as always. Nobody’s going to stop pouring your wine when you’re taking the trouble to pay them some attention.)

Ian tells us that he was recently at both Pommery and Veuve Clicquot in Reims, and how the houses are near neighbours. How odd that these two giants of French wine, both women, and who loom so large as the Widows Clicquot and Pommery, were so geographically close, although Madame Clicquot was widowed in the early 1800s, while Madame Pommery only took over the Pommery house on her husband’s death in 1860. But we have to think: surely one influenced the other in the context of “if she can do it, I can do it”. That is how we humans are.

The mountain Madame Pommery climbed was awesome in the best application of that overused word. Eight years after Alexandre Pommery died in 1860, his widow Louise had turned the farm into what was called the “construction site of the century”, transforming crayères (chalk pits) into cellars which would become the classic way to store and age the famous wines of the great champagne houses.

But Madame Pommery’s greatest achievement was to create the Brut (dry) style of champagne that is ubiquitous in our time. In her day, to create a champagne less than highly sugared was outlandish, and you can imagine that there would have been much scoffing into wine glasses and turning up of elegant noses.

Pommery Nature arrived on the scene in 1874 to signal the arrival of Brut Champagne, and the world of fine bubbles in glasses was never the same again.

Chef Manning is on and introducing his first course. Well, there are two options of starter and main course, but it soon becomes clear that there is the actual main course and another one. If you were unfortunate enough to order the wrong one, it may not have paired so well with the chosen wine, which was Pommery Royal Blue Elixir Demi-Sec. Having said that, at no point did any waiter ask for my preference. I’m okay with this, because they happened to bring what I would have chosen anyway, so maybe there really is something in the air tonight in Tokai — something mysterious in the breeze, a whisper of mischief fused with a soupçon of suspicion.

Ostrich carpaccio, beetroot tarte Tatin, peeled orange segments, fresh pear, dressed with ponzu and balsamic vinegar. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

The plate before me has beautiful shavings of ostrich carpaccio, beetroot tarte Tatin, peeled orange segments, fresh pear, and is dressed with ponzu and balsamic vinegar. The Nippon-minded chefs among us, not least Peter Tempelhoff even back in his Greenhouse (Cellars-Hohenort) days, brought the citrusy delight that is ponzu to our palates, and now it is just one of the things we live and find in our food all over, like Worcestershire sauce (don’t knock it) and, yes, balsamic vinegar. The sweeter and deeper in flavour the better, in the last case. This really is my kind of food, elegant yet unfussy, all about the flavours, and they all sang in the same choir. I was a happy boy. (It’s less thrilling when an element on the plate seems to have wandered in from a concert up the road.)

The Royal Elixir is a perfect blend of 33% of each of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier, aged for three years or more in those chalky, humid caverns, and is described in the notes as “a delicate pale-yellow hue with silver reflections” (on the eye), “subtly enchanting, with ripe apricots, sweet pastries, orange blossom, and a hint of chamomile and menthol”. The last word makes me think of the awful cigarettes I tried as a stupid teenager, so I’m happy not to have found that in it, though I do like the ring of sweet pastries and orange blossom. But really, we try too hard to find too many words for wine.

The palate was “a perfect balance of freshness and generosity”, just like Ian opposite me with his engaging manner. The silky texture perfectly described Sam Linsell’s flouncy dress, and it did indeed have a long, captivating finish, just like my daughter’s deep and abiding personality and character. Amazing what you can find in a wine after more than three sips.

Matt has now sent us his next course, but first I have gone up to find him at the bar, to learn that his wife is a fan of mine, whereupon I’m thinking, “And you?”, but I don’t say it. A beautiful woman nearby overhears us and flashes me a fabulous smile and I wonder, is that her? Maybe I’ll find out the answers to these thoughts next time.

I would have chosen the lamb, I wasn’t asked, but there it was. For a nanosecond, another plate of lamb was placed before my daughter, but the waiter quickly grabbed it and made off with it while Rebecca and I beseeched her to bring it back. “Where are you going with my lamb?” accompanied by an almost imperceptible wail. There had been some kind of misunderstanding and the impending disaster was quickly put to rights. Lamb is a big thing in our family, and you don’t whip it away from us without a fight.

Roasted lamb loin, braised neck, a lentil ragout, roasted turnip, hints of harissa. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Roasted loin, braised neck, a lentil ragout, roasted turnip, hints of harissa. Very good. With it, Pommery Apanage Blanc de Blancs, 100% Chardonnay, four years in the chalk cellars. “Subtle floral notes of jasmine and acacia are harmoniously combined with delicate grades of linden.” Somebody is trying too hard here. (Linden? Do they mean the tea?) It’s pleasingly citrusy for me, and yes, fresh apple and yellow grapefruit were discernible once I’d read the notes.

It’s pitched as a Champagne for a “privileged moment, to appreciate especially with seafood, such as caviar, a tartare of tuna or a carpaccio of scallops”. And here we are drinking it with lamb. Sorry, Matt.

I instantly take to chef Manning. I still live far away, so until now I have had to read what others write about some of the chefs in the Cape, but humour is everything to me, and this man is so damn funny. Effortlessly yet wickedly, what an imp. He almost fools everyone with some seemingly pious comments about the first champagne poured into our glasses, but quickly shrugs it off as if to say, moi, pretentious?

I need to share my first impression of these Pommery wines. The colour! No man, not the hue of the wine in the glass. Pommery blue! Blue is my colour, and this version of azure (technically the colour between cyan and blue) is so beautiful I want to paint my home in it.

Chocolate pavé, meringue, honeycomb, berry sorbet and strawberry coulis. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

There are no dessert choices, thank goodness, so we’re all served the same thing, with Pommery Brut Royal Rosé to match. The Pinot Noir (at 38%) gives it a pinkly salmony blush, leavened by 31% Pinot Meunier, and the same degree of chardonnay. Described as “finely robust”, the subtly berry-like taste profile seemed happily in tune with the chocolate pavé accompanied by meringue, honeycomb, berry sorbet and strawberry coulis.

To end the night, we’re invited out onto the deck overlooking the Norval museum’s lovely sculpture garden, where we’re served nightcap glasses of Pommery’s Royal Blue Sky, in its exquisite bottle.

But we have a post-nightcap treat of our own. In the back of a car for the ride home, we dip into our goodie bags to find a little bottle each of Pommery “Pop”, a zingy bit of bubbly fun in the coolest bottle ever. Just the kind of topping, or popping, for a fun dad-daughter night out. DM

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