Tag Archives: Charlene Wittstock

Monaco Marriage of Prince Albert and Princess Charlene puts South Africa on world map

Today Prince Albert and Princess Charlene will wed religiously, after they wed in a civil ceremony in the Throne Room of the palace in Monaco yesterday afternoon.  Their marriage is an exciting marriage for South Africa too, with Princess Charlene proudly bringing her South African pride into interviews and profiles published about the dream royal couple. The streets of Monaco are lined with South African flags, and those from the Princess’ new home country.

Gracing the pages of Vogue for the first time, and Bunte in Germany regularly, as well as the subject of regular TV programmes on European TV stations, including ZDF, Germany’s largest TV channel, as well as The Guardian, New York Times, and Associated Press, the couple and their dream wedding are being widely profiled around the world, the first royal marriage in 55 years in the principality.  The wedding media hype and interest increased dramatically earlier this week, when a French on-line agency reported that Charlene Wittstock had almost become a ‘run-away bride’. 

VIP attendees at the religious wedding ceremony today include the German Chancellor Christian Wulff, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni, President Pal Schmitt of Hungary, President George Abela of Malta, King Carl Gustav of Sweden, King Albert of Belgium, Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg, Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, Crown Prince Frederik from Denmark, Prince Edward, Prince Faisal bin al Hussein of Jordan, models Naomi Campbell and Karolina Kurkova, Sir Roger Moore, President Michel Sleimane of Lebanon, President Mary McAleese of Ireland, Minister of Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk representing the South African government, Jeff Radebe, Johann Rupert, Leruo Molotlegi of the Kingdom of Bafokeng, King Letsie of Lesotho, Karl Lagerfeld, Giorgio Armani, Roberto Cavalli, Yves Piaget, Gerard Butler, Nadia Comenici, Bernard Arnault, Renée Fleming, Ryk Neethling, Roland Schoeman, Francois Pienaar, Elana Meyer, Terence Bray, as well as Sarah Poewe, ex-Cape Town fellow Olympic swimmer with Princess Charlene, and now resident in Germany and swimming for the German team. 

The royal couple impressed with its care for the environment, their bridal hybrid Lexus car having been especially made by Toyota, driven only under electric motor power, reported the Sunday Times.  More than twenty years ago Princess Charlene expressed her care for the environment, in a school composition she wrote about the ozone layer.  She loves Blushing Brides so much that 500 stems have been flown in from Citrusdal for her wedding flower arrangements.

South  Africa’s cuisine is also in the spotlight, with Chef Dean Uren of Zimbali Lodge and his colleague Peter Mtshali being part of the team which catered for 6000 guests attending the civil ceremony yesterday, and will head the preparation of a special South African meal for 200 guests on Monday, before the royal couple head for Durban, to attend the 123rd session of the International Olympic Committee, the first time that it will be held in Africa.  Chef Dean’s menu is still a secret, but will include pastries stuffed with ostrich bobotie, and kudu prepared with typical boerewors spices, including kameelhout spice, coriander, pepper and cloves, reported the Sunday Times.   The main wedding meal, served in the Opera for 850 guests today, will be prepared by top chef Alain Ducasse and a team of 350.   He owns 20 restaurants, opening two more this year, in Russia and in Doha.  He has 19 Michelin stars in total across his collection of restaurants, and three of them have three stars.  Chef Alain has not revealed what’s on the menu yet, but he will represent the smell, colour and taste of the Mediterranean with fresh line-caught fish, vegetables and fruit for dessert, all ingredients coming from within 10 km of the principality.  Perrier-Jouët champagne will be served, alongside the Haskell Vineyards’ Dombeya Chardonnay and Shiraz, the owner Preston Haskell being a long-standing friend of Prince Albert, and the royal couple have partied at Haskell’s Fresnaye home in the past.   The wedding cake will link to South Africa’s national flower, the protea, reports Bunte.

Although Princess Charlene is now married to the 9th richest person in the world, her tastes are simple, and she longs for Mrs Balls chutney and rooibos tea.  South African music talent was also represented in the wedding celebrations, with Idols co-winner Jason Hartman, who was chosen by Princess Charlene to be the supporting act to an open air concert by The Eagles on Thursday evening. Local boy band Romanz will perform ‘With all my Heart’ tonight, and do a duet with Italian pop star Umberto Tozzi.   Jean-Michel Jarre put on an electronic music show last night, to which all Monaco residents were invited.

Princess Charlene is turning into a style icon, and the most recent Bunte had a feature of beautiful dresses photographed by Karl Lagerfeld.   Her wedding dress has been designed by Giorgio Armani, her favourite designer, an honour shared with designer Albert Kriemler of Akris.  Increasingly Princess Charlene is wearing bold Africa-inspired jewellery with her outfits, reinforcing her heritage.  She looked beautiful in the blue pants suit she wore for the civil ceremony, which she had designed herself and had made by Chanel, reports Associated Press.

Next week the Royal couple leave for their honeymoon in Durban, where they will be hosting a reception at The Oyster Box in Umhlanga next Thursday 7 July, for 300 local friends, family and VIP’s.

We congratulate Prince Albert and Princess Charlene on their marriage, and wish them lots of happiness and a large family.

Ex-Miss South Africa and Top Billing presenter Jo-Anne Strauss will be covering the wedding on SABC3 today, from 14h00 – 20h30.

POSTSCRIPT 2/7: The Weekend Argus has reported that Princess Charlene will be in Cape Town next Friday 8 July, attending a function of the Giving Organisation Trust with Archbishop Desmond Tutu in Noordhoek, and visiting the Cotlands HIV/AIDS hospice in Somerset West, and the Fynbos Project at Lourensford.

POSTSCRIPT 2/7: Princess Charlene looked very serious, if not sad, at her religious wedding ceremonyin the palace this afternoon, crying when she left her bridal bouquet at the Sainte Devoté church, as the late Princess Grace did too.  Talk about a third child of Prince Albert is not going away. 

POSTSCRIPT 2/7:  Minister of Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk attended the wedding on behalf of President Zuma and the South African government, reports the Weekend Argus:“And as tourism minister he’s really happy there is such a big South African influence in the wedding.  The name of South Africa will be all over the world again as it was a year ago at the World Cup. That will be very good for tourism and for the country”, said the Minister’s spokesman Riaan Aucamp. 

POSTSCRIPT 5/7:  Interestingly, the wine selection at the wedding appears to have caused a swirl in a wine glass!  It would appear that Dombeya wines were not the only South African ones to have been featured at the Royal wedding on Saturday.  Neil Pendock of The Times wrote that Vins D’Orrance claimed that their Chardonnay 2009 Cuvee Andis was the ‘only South African wine chosen for the wedding’, incorrect given the Dombeya wines selection from the Haskell wine estate, which belongs to Prince Albert’s friend Preston Haskell, and confirmed by a Royal Palace-approved media release earlier this year.  A total of 1000 bottles of Dombeya Chardonnay 2010, Boulder Red Shiraz, and Samara 2005 went to Monaco,  and 700 bottles of the Chardonnay and Samara have been sent to the Oyster Box for the cocktail function on Thursday.  Hempies du Toit of Annandale is also reported in Die Volksblad to have made a wine for the wedding, and he called his six year old Merlot Charlbert, with French labels, and supplied 150 Magnums as well as a ‘bunch of 750ml bottles’ as souvenirs of the wedding.  Du Toit is a friend of the Wittstock family, and the year of the Merlot bottling co-incides with the year in which Prince Albert and Princess Charlène started dating. 

POSTSCRIPT 9/7:  The Financial Times has an interesting article on the preparation of the wedding meal by Chef Alain Ducassse and his team, with beautiful photographs.  

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com  Twitter:@WhaleCottage

Celebration: Reaching the milestone of 1000 blogposts!

Today we have reached an exciting milestone on our Whale Cottage Blog, in that this is our 1000th blogpost.  We thank our readers for their support in reading our blog, and for providing feedback, to help us improve as we developed over the almost three years. In numerology, 1000 symbolises multitude and perfection, we have learnt from Google, and we dedicate our next 1000 blogposts to be worthy of this definition.

Highlights have been making the Top 10 on the Most Controversial Blog category of the 2010 SA Blog Awards, achieving a cumulative unique readership of just under half a million in the last 16 months (about 30000 per month on average), and setting up the Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club last year.

So what have we learnt about blogging and our blog in the close to three years:

*   Restaurant news in general, and reviews and special offers specifically have attracted the greatest interest on this blog.   Our most widely read restaurant reviews, since we went onto Google Analytics 16 months ago, are for Tokara DeliCATessen, Sotana by Caveau, Gaaitjie, Pierneef à La Motte, and Duchess on Wisbeach.  It was the enjoyment of writing the review of Portofino restaurant, owned by Cormac Keane, that got us started with reviews, and we have written more than 100 reviews since then.  We have seen negative reaction to some of these, and have been banned from the Caveau group of restaurants (including Sotano), the Caviar group of restaurants (Beluga and Sevruga), Opal Lounge, and Café des Arts as a result.  Restaurants generally are poor at Social Media, and only a handful blog and/or are on Twitter.  This means that a restaurant’s information most often is provided by a blog rather than by the restaurant’s own website, which can be to its advantage or diadvantage, depending on the reviews that are listed on the first page of Google.  Other highly read blogposts are the Winter and Summer Restaurant Specials lists, the Table Mountain vote for the New7Wonders of the World, Prince Albert and Charlene Wittstock’s visit to Fresnaye in January 2009, and the Disney service training programme instituted just days before the World Cup. 

*   Tourism topics have also attracted attention, probably because there are far fewer writers on this topic.

*    Word spreads quickly if a blogpost is controversial, and brings in new readers to the blog.  Despite all allegations to the contrary, we have never written a blogpost to be controversial.  It is the reaction to it by our readers that causes the controversy. 

*   Comments have become harder to manage, and increasingly cowardly commenters write anonymously to slate the writer of the blog or the subject of a blogpost.  If one deletes such comments, one is criticised; if one publishes them, one is equally criticised!

*   While blog readers enjoy honesty, and probably read this blog for it, those that are on the receiving end of it plus their friends do react with venom, rather than using the feedback to improve their service and quality. The nastiness in ‘unSocial Media’, our new name for it, has been shocking, especially in a campaign by David Cope on Twitter, where anything goes!

*   Blogging has become very competitive, as bloggers chase readership, and want to be the first to review a new restaurant.  Achieving a first page Google listing for a restaurant, for example, can attract readership over time to the blog by new users when they Google the name of a restaurant.    

*   Readership is disappointingly low on public holidays and weekends.  Saturdays have the lowest blog reading numbers, dropping by up to half of weekday readership. Our highest readership of this blog was on 16 June 2010, during last year’s World Cup, when a tag for ‘2010’ was widely linked to this blog, attracting 9000 page views on that day alone. 

*   Although most readers are unknown to the writer, one carries a huge responsibility in shaping people’s opinions through what one writes.   We try our best to remain objective in presenting information at all times.  We have been blamed for wishing to destroy restaurants and new initiatives, yet supply news about restaurant openings and specials all the time.  Attempts were made last year by Michael Olivier (Editor of Crush!), David Cope (The Foodie Blogger) and Skye Grove (Cape Town Tourism PR Manager) to have this blog closed down.  We moved our blog hosting to America, to prevent this. 

*   Information as well as images are most likely to bring traffic via Google to the website, followed by Twitter.   Facebook is far less likely to draw traffic.

*   The weekly Sweet & Sour Service are enjoyed by readers, and many readers read the blog on a Friday, to check who has received the Sour Award, and then catch up in reading the blogposts of the pevious week.  The Spar Sweet/Limelight Sour Service Awards attracted an unusually high readership, and still do.

Looking forward, we plan to continue being honest, no matter what the cost.  We will endeavour to remain relevant, and to remain heard in the increasing Social Media ‘noise’, as more and more blogs are started, and existing ones reinvent themselves.   We will try to write shorter blogposts!   We will continue helping others to become better bloggers, and will endeavour to never stop learning from others too.

Thank you 1000 times for your readership and support!

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com  Twitter:@WhaleCottage

Restaurant Specials top of Top 10 Whale Cottage Blogposts!

Our Blog is two and  half years old, and we have been dedicated to keeping up our initial goal of writing a blog post a day, with only a few exceptions.  Blog writing is scary initially, as one does not know if anyone, and who, is reading the blog, until one reads comments from readers, if they reveal their real names.

Out of interest, we checked the more than 400000 unique pageviews of our blogposts for the past twelve months via Google Analytics, widely regarded as the most reliable benchmark of readership.  Our Blogposts with the Winter, as well as the Spring and Summer Restaurant Specials, have attracted strong interest, with the remaining Top 10 most read blogposts being a mixed bag, containing four restaurant reviews, indicating that blog readers love reading about restaurants.  We have just launched the Winter 2011 Restaurant Specials list.

The Whale Cottage Blog Top 10 blog post list in the past twelve months is the following:

1.   Winter Restaurant Specials for winter 2010

2.   Table Mountain a nominee for the New7Wonders of the World

3.   Spring and Summer Restaurant Specials : 2010/2011

4.   Prince Albert’s attendance at Charlene Wittstock’s birthday party in Fresnaye in January 2009 – the recent engagement and the forthcoming marriage of the couple keeps pulling traffic to the blog

5.   Restaurant Review of Tokara DeliCATessen (a surprise, but probably due to potential search confusion between the Deli at Tokara, and the Tokara Restaurant.  Ranked third on Google search for this deli).

6.   Restaurant Review: Sotano by Caveau – this blogpost caused a stir, mainly due to the rude response it received on Twitter from one of the Caveau owners

7.   Presentation by Disney before World Cup to frontline hospitality and tourism staff, to enhance service levels – it was a ‘Mickey Mouse’ presentation, of little value, and cost the taxpayer a fortune!

8.   The Stellenbosch Restaurant Route – the popularity of this blogpost, listing the significant restaurants in Stellenbosch, is rewarding, as the Stellenbosch Restaurant Route is something I created on this blog, to honour Stellenbosch now wearing the Gourmet Capital crown.

9.  Restaurant Review: Pierneef à La Motte – this is one of my favourite reviews, and was a pleasure to write from the generous background information I received from Hein Koegelenberg, and in reaction to the amazing food that I have enjoyed there.  Experiencing it for the first time gave me goose bumps, knowing that this will become an Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant for 2011.

10.   Restaurant Review: Gaaitjie Restaurant in Paternoster – our review is regularly read, ranked first on Google for this restaurant. 

In the past month the Top 10 most read Blogposts were as follows:

1.   President of Ferrero Rocher dies in cycling accident in Cape Town – this is not normally a story we would write, but we wanted to correct early headlines that stated that Pietro Ferrero was ‘killed in SA accident’, implying yet another crime statistic, which was completely incorrect.

2.   The Consumer Protection Act, of vital importance to every South African business dealing with the consumer

3.   Departure of Chef David Higgs from Rust en Vrede – probably due to the lack of a statement from Higgs as to why he is leaving and where he is going, this blogpost still attracts regular readership

4.   Cape Town and Winelands Spring and Summer Restaurant Specials for summer 2010/2011

5.   Cape Town to become a 24-hour world class city, detailing plans for various development hubs in Cape Town, including the expansion of the Cape Town International Convention Centre

6.   Restaurant Review: Casparus Restaurant in Stellenbosch (right), an Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant prediction for 2012

7.   Restaurant Review: Dear Me in Shortmarket Street

8.   Tasting Room best restaurant in Africa/Middle East, reflecting the results of the S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants

9.   Restaurant Review: Dash at the Queen Victoria Hotel, an Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant Award prediction for 2012

10.   Hotels in Cape Town offer wide range of winter rates, but discriminate against foreigners.

Google Analytics also measures clicks on tags, and the top tags in the past month, which led Google searches to the Whale Cottage Blog, were ‘Charlene Wittstock’ (very high source of traffic), ‘Prince William’, ‘Table Mountain’, ‘Marthinus van Schalkwyk’, ‘El Bulli’, ‘Cape of Good Hope’, ‘Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company;  ‘petrol price’, ‘SA Tourism’, and ‘Hemelhuijs Restaurant’.

We welcome your feedback about our blog, and the stories you would like to read more about.  Thank you to all our readers for your readership, support, suggestions, and comments.  

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com  Twitter:@WhaleCottage

Dombeya Wines get the royal nod in Monaco!

South African swimmer Charlene Wittstock is to marry Prince Albert of Monaco on 2 and 3 July, and they have chosen to put the future princess’ home country in the spotlight by exclusively serving Dombeya wines at the two day wedding event, to be attended by 3500 wedding guests from around the world, reports the Weekend Argus.

Prince Albert is a fan of Haskell Vineyards (previously known as Dombeya Wines, after the Dombeya wild pear tree) outside Stellenbosch, above Rust en Vrede, and he has regularly visited the winery over the past five years.  Prince Albert signed up as the first member of the Haskell Platinum Wine Club.  The Prince and Ms Wittstock have attended one of the highly sought after New Year’s Eve parties which American businessman and wine estate owner Preston Haskell hosts annually at his Cape Town mansion in Fresnaye, attendance which is by invitation only.  The prince has been a supporter of Haskell and Dombeya wines, and has helped make these wine brands known in Monaco. 

Haskell Vineyards produces both Haskell and Dombeya wines, and are made by the award-winning winemaker Rianie Strydom, who joined Haskell Vineyards in 2005.  The Dombeya range consists of Boulder Road, Shiraz, Chardonnay, Samara, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

Wines of South Africa’s CEO Su Birch has hailed this news as a marketing coup for South African wines.

POSTSCRIPT 13/3: The Sunday Argus reports today that Prince Albert and Charlene Wittstock will have a second wedding celebration, at the Oyster Box Hotel in Umhlanga on 7 July, five days after their official wedding in Monaco.  President Zuma is one of the 300 guests said to be invited.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com  Twitter: @WhaleCottage