Spekboom leads the way in a reimagining of food and wine tasting at Geuwels restaurant

Michelle Theron, formerly executive chef at Pierneef à La Motte, recently joined Vergenoegd Löw estate as head of gastronomy (isn’t that a grander title than Executive Chef? It suggests intention and urgency, both of which are on her agenda). She has been hosting personalised chef’s table experiences in Professor Peter Löw’s private villa, where she hosted Daily Maverick for a taste of what is in store.

Michelle has created elegance and balance out of the relative chaos that comes with renovation. Both Geuwels and Clara’s Barn restaurants (recently associated with Bertus Basson) are undergoing renovation, and Theron’s food and wine pairing experience is primed to launch at Geuwels on Friday, 24 October 2025.

We’re at an elegantly decked table in a vineyard with a view. It’s a cool Monday morning and you can sense the salty coastal air on the breeze. The merroir — the maritime equivalent of terroir — of nearby False Bay lingers on the nostril and caresses your neck. In front of me, fittingly, a miniature intrigue tucked into a curl of lettuce tastes very much like a traditional Caesar salad, but, instead of anchovies, what it contains is tiny slivers of bokkom, the salted harders (mullet) of the West Coast. The sea somehow feels nearer.

We’re her very happy guinea pigs

Five wine glasses are set out before us, but this is not your ordinary wine tasting. Only a few months ago, I experienced another unusual tasting at Vergenoegd Löw: we tasted bokkoms, amasi, roosterkoek and biltong, paired with Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, Merlot, Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon. Michelle tasted that too, and said she was “super inspired — how can I take this offering and kind of make it a little bit more?”

Now she has developed the idea further. The menu is highly intentional, with each bite carefully paired with a specific Vergenoegd Löw wine. And we’re her (very happy) guinea pigs. (Löw, by the way, is pronounced “loov”, almost as you’d say ‘Louvre”.)

“So I’m actually gonna test it out on you guys. You’re gonna be the first to see it.”

Round wooden platters had been brought out and set before us. And oh so beautiful to the eye and, yes, reminiscent of that earlier indigenous tasting experience but taken a few steps further. Little bites are placed around the edge of the board, garnished in the centre with sprigs and twigs of indigenous plants, studded with bits of biltong and bokkom.

And I need to tell you something: I’m not usually one for rosé, but when it is presented in this kind of tasting, matched with a specific component of a platter, it would be churlish to say you’d rather have something else. 

This is their 2025 Cabernet Franc rosé, and I’ve rarely tasted a more delicious, refreshing wine, and I now intend to follow my rosé-mad friend Kobus van der Merwe down a pink rabbit hole. It has a pale quince colour (the estate’s tasting notes refer to its onion-skin hue). Their notes also cite Turkish delight on the palate, but that’s too sweet a thought. Let’s just say it’s pure bottled elegance. 

The estate’s Sauvignon Blanc 2025 had been paired with the bokkom “Caesar” salad, the Chardonnay with the prosciutto wrapped around a twist of puff pastry made with kaiing (crackling) fat.

A meaty flavour from the kaiings

“The pastry gives you a little bit of the brioche-y kind of butteriness, but with a meaty flavour from the kaiings that I think picks up very well with the Chardonnay.”

I remark that it’s a lovely wine and makes me want more — of the pastry and prosciutto. Okay, and the wine. 

A tidy square of savoury buttermilk rusk topped with pinkly pickled radish was matched with that gloriously elegant rosé, and then it was time to match red wines with the remaining items on the wooden “clock”, on which we had started the tasting at six o’clock and proceeded anticlockwise. Actually it was 10am but you know what I mean. Now, having passed the prosciutto, we’d settled on the little radish-topped rusk at about five past one. (This was a slightly inaccurate clock and I might be regretting the metaphor, but my palate must have been in a hurry to get to that rosé.)

No ordinary buttermilk rusk, this. Michelle explained: “Instead of making a sweet version, we just cut out the sugar. We made a hung cheese out of amasi, hanging it in muslin cloth just to give it a little more texture. Plain and simple, nothing added to it. There’s nothing fancy about this. And then we did a pickled radish on top.”

Meanwhile I’m sipping that rosé and hoping for more; only it’s barely past breakfast time.

I’m looking at spekboom with fresh eyes

At five to one on the wooden platter — or maybe seven minutes before the hour — was a skewered little roll of fine Dexter beef carpaccio enveloped in spekboom chutney. I was amazed at this wonderful relish and that it had been made entirely from spekboom leaves with onion, garlic, salt and pepper. Nothing else. Not a single spice other than a touch of ground coriander. And I’m looking at spekboom with fresh eyes.

I liked Michelle’s next observation too, after I’d told her how much I loved the simplicity of that beef. 

“This Dexter beef has got such beautiful flavour. It’s really interesting and I’m a firm believer in, if something is already beautiful, I don’t need to try to be all cheffy about it and kill it dead with ten million other ingredients just to sound cool.”

Their 2023 Amalie Merlot was an obvious match for the Dexter carpaccio, and their Lara Cabernet Sauvignon 2023 was paired with both the biltong tart and the little square of chocolate wonder.

I’d been eyeing the little round bowl containing what looked like a pile of biltong dust. But what I’d thought was a tiny bowl was the base of a biltong tart. It’s a variation of a spektert (bacon tart), but instead of using bacon Michelle used biltong. 

“Spektert is the old Dutch word for quiche,” she says. “It’s the egg custard with biltong and a little bit of spring onion. You can bite into the whole thing.”

‘It’s a biltong bomb!’

It was very “biltongy”, really intensely, delightfully so. “No bacon, and I added lots of the biltong, because this is all about the biltong. There’s even biltong and a little bit of mature Cheddar in the pastry. So that’s like a whole mouthful of biltong.”

And it is that. And I hope to see entire, whole giant tarts of it on the menu here once Geuwels has reopened just down the road. I cannot wait. 

“It’s a little biltong pie,” I announce, and later, “It’s a biltong bomb!”

Imagine a slice of that with an indigenous salad of Kobus-style veldkool and whatnot on the side? (I like to think that chef Michelle is writing down a note as she reads this. 🙂)

Also on the side would need to be a glass of this cabernet sauvignon. Which, she tells us, is also to be paired with that little sweet treat at 6.35 on the clock.

“So a lot of the time, I quite like pairing something that’s dark chocolate with a red wine. So the cab not only goes with the salty biltong tart you just had, it’s actually quite a lovely pairing with this brownie, and there is spekboom inside of that brownie.”

With apologies to the entire Karoo

That little die of dark chocolate heaven (die as in the singular of dice) ended the tasting, but I persuaded myself to have a bite of the roosterkoek offered on a separate plate. 

With apologies to the entire Karoo: I’m not a fan of roosterkoek; I find it too chewy, with few happy exceptions. But this one was light, and Michelle explained why.

She stores her sourdough mothers and poolishes in the cellar, and names them after past owners or family matriarchs from the farm’s history.

They’re stored in winemaker Vusi Dalicuba’s cellar because “I want them to pick something up”.

There’s much more to come from Michelle Theron’s plans for Clara’s Barn and Geuwels, as well as other spots on this farm where intentional wilding gives you a sense of being further away from the nearby vineyards. Breakfast at the hearth in the homestead, high teas, platters of proper local cheeses, harvest tables and more. 

“I want people, when they’re coming to my restaurant, I want them to feel like they’re coming to me,” says this chef with a heart full of comfort and kind things.

But in the meantime, as from next Friday, Geuwels beckons you with this remarkable tasting presentation on which everything is a delight. And don’t miss that luscious rosé.

People will be able to book it in advance, Michelle says, if you want to plan ahead for a later visit. After the tasting, you even get a sweet treat to take home with you. DM

Email geuwels@vergenoegd.co.za visit https://vergenoegd.co.za/geuwels/ or phone 021 851 5541

Daily Maverick was a guest of chef Michelle Theron. The tasting was complimentary.