Spinifex Barossa Valley Papillon 2009

“Make the best of what we offer you, and you will suffer less than you deserve.” Camp Commandant from Papillon

I remember watching this for the first time on a wet and wintery Fremantle day when I was about 11. It let me with one lesson; no matter how much you try, you’ll always be trapped. This was pretty heavy for me at the time, but never the less apt – I had two older sisters and was always the whipping boy with no escape. But enough about my traumatic childhood.

So far this is my second favourite wine of the year. The Spinifex Barossa Papillon Barossa Valley 2009. A blend of Cinsault, Grenache and Mataro, this wine started as mistaken identity; I meant to grab the Bête Noir, but in my haste one evening I grabbed this (have since grabbed it about five times!).

This wine caught me off guard. Quite opaque and dirty in the glass, the nose offers a wonderful mix of dried herbs and tart red fruit. The palate is very true to the nose with more tart red fruit, cranberry being the dominant for me, with tight and clean acid certainly making its presence known throughout the whole bottle. This is also the type of wine that needs food, not just a lazy Friday night quoffer.

Drink with rump steak and béarnaise sauce
Drink till 2014
96
Screwcap 13.8%v/v $27 from Blackhearts & Sparrows, North Fitzroy

A right of reply to Toni Jordan's article in 'The Age', September 7, 2010

It’s been a while hasn’t it.

It was about 12 months ago that I took a fair run up and had a whack at Michael Shmith from ‘The Age’. He wrote a restaurant etiquette article which was published in ‘Epicure’ where he basically had a go at various front of house rituals; my favourite was when he asked a FOH manger where the toilets were only to be looked at oddly and without directions. We all know Michael that the trees across the road from the restaurant would have been fine!

So with this I had my right of reply. And even though I wasn’t at that time working in a restaurant (still not), I couldn’t just read this self indulgent drivel and not get my soapbox out.

Move almost 12 months on and it seems another worldly Age journo has gotten out a stick and gone whack at restaurants again. And the reason this time; dodgy adjectives to describe menu’s!

Now I sort of agree that some menus go a bit far in selling their fare; giving the town from where the beast was raised to me is a little too personal. I don’t want to know that said bovine lived next door to old Mabel in Royal Street Wonthaggi – the district will suffice.

What got up my goat about this article, written by the smiling Toni Jordan, and the same with the Shmith article from last year is they don’t name restaurants. Is this so Dubecki and Co aren’t chased out of eateries by meat cleaver wielding chefs?
When writing an article like this, shouldn’t you start with real examples of what she calls ‘... dodgy adjectives to gloriously describe a menu is simply poor taste.’ What I find poor taste is what she starts with:

''FREE-RANGE organic brown wild duck breast and leg (but not the thigh because that's too fatty), stuffed with hand-polished Israeli pearl couscous, surrounded by a sprinkling of sun-dried heirloom apple picked by naked virgins under a full moon, and crescendoed by kalamata olives pickled by my Greek grandmother in Brunswick 1999.''

Followed with.....

''Slow-cooked tails surgically removed from happy oxen who spend their lives listening to Mozart, nestled on a Doona of home-made wholemeal chestnut gnocchi, napped by a jus studded with chunks of oven-roasted then smoked embryonic beetroot and ribbons of black cavelo nero that has travelled only 80 food miles to get here, on the back of the forementioned now-tailless ox.''

Come on! Show me one menu in Melbourne that comes within three light years of the above rants and I will happily buy you dinner Toni. I bet you that if you saw on a menu, ‘Duck – cooked here’, you would surely be curious in how it was cooked. What about the wine list – would you like red or white with your piece of meat?

All this is is a generalist insight in to Melbourne restaurants: do you think Jacque Reymond or Guy Grossi are two chefs she is taking aim at? What about Shannon Bennet or Teague Ezard? Don’t think so.

I dunno, maybe it has been a quiet news week; I can't think of anything that has been making the news over the past few weeks except for some bloke in FNQ wearing a silly hat!

Question; are all journalists as right wing as Andrew Bolt? Maybe that is a generalist remark on journalists or is Toni just getting a little out of hand like the all of the other Melbourne menu descriptors are. Ponderous, really ponderous!

Fathers Day 2010

Father, n. A quartermaster and commissary of subsistence provided by nature for our maintenance in the period before we have learned to live by prey. Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911

Father’s Day has come and gone and this dad has, like many, increased his undy collection.

Unlike last year, Father’s Day this year was an indoor occasion due to this never ending winter that still has a tight hold on the garden state. But Father’s day; a sleep in and breakfast in bed and peace and quiet until about 10am.

Father’s Day this year was pretty slim for presents; this is fine though, I’m not moaning. This year is Imogen’s first year at school, and the Thursday before there was a Father’s Day market after school where she got me a notebook, a pen and a beautiful tie (which I duly to work); just what a dad needs hey!

Because the BBQ was out of action due to the weather, red meat was off the menu – kitchen vent is on the fritz. But not to worry. Lately I have had a hankering for fish, and more importantly Asian inspired fish dishes. On this night it was sweet soy-glazed salmon (no photo unfortunately). Absolutely gorgeous!! Now you gotta be careful with fish. It is so easy to overcook, especially when you start it in the pan then transfer it to the oven. But this salmon was just perfect.

Just before sticking the salmon in the oven I pulled out my wine from the fridge and left it sit for 10 minutes to raise the temp; I don’t like my white wine too cold, especially when it is a bottle of Giaconda Beechworth Chardonnay 2005 – Cette boutielle porte le No. 03154. Slightly golden in the glass, the nose sprang to attention with a waft of butterscotch and licorice powder standing out. The palate was still being held together with crisp acid, not achingly tort, but very much the master holding everything in place – nougat, citrus, mealy hazelnuts and a great minerality feel about the wine. Now it’s not the best Giaconda chardonnay I have had – the 2002, but it still such a great wine, and thankfully I have been patient and still have two bottles left.

Drink with soy-glazed salmon
Drink till 2014
97
Screwcap 13.8%v/v $75 mailing list

Alvins bruised salad and Hidden Bird Martinborough Sauvignon Blanc 2009

Version I

I like Masterchef. I think it is great and actually. I love Masterchef. There you have it, an unashamed and spontaneous pledge of affection. And like most Australians this year, I have taken a few recipes from the Masterchef website and given them a go myself. But the one I reckon has had the most hits is the one that the judges loved; Alvin’s drunken chicken and bruised salad.

Version II - bowl licked clean 2 minutes later

In the past four weeks, not once, not twice but thrice, I have fixed together Alvin’s bruised salad – minus the drunken chicken, that stayed quite sober each time. A fair-dinkum ripper (that mind you is the 383,590th time that ‘Fair-dinkum’ has been uttered since this election started). No really, this salad is the dogs bollocks, the ridgy-didge, the full-lot and the narly dude all rolled into one – even my daughter Imogen thought it was ‘rad-man’ – on my mother’s life!

It really is that good!

Oh yeah, we had a bottle of Hidden Bird Martinborough Sauvignon Blanc 2009 to wash it down – quite nice actually (the word 'Martinborough' is hidden on the label; get it, Hidden Bird), not bitter and astringent like those other savvies from the south island. This has got a bit more minerality than cats pee if you know what I mean!

Drink with http://www.masterchef.com.au/drunken-chicken-with-bruised-salad.htm
Drink now
90
Screwcap 13.5%v/v $21 from Kooyong Cellars, Glenferrie Road, Kooyong

Pommery Brut Apanage NV, Reims Champagne

Well now, seems I have been away from this blog for ages! Just so happens that we are gearing up for the first Australian release of Pommery Brut Apanage NV - Hooray!!

Since Pommery started up shop in Australia late last year, there have been a few people out there in restaurant land snubbing their noses at the Brut Royal simply because of its association with Fosters. You see Pommery had been wasting away in the depths of the Fosters portfolio for about 4 years, and in this time champagnes such as Jacquersson and Lamandier have really rocked the landscape for champagne not only in Melbourne but the rest of the champagne drinking cities in Australia. But things are about to change.

Enter stage right Brut Apanage. Now the Brut Apanage has the same assemblage as the Brut Royal - a third each of chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier, but the fruit for the Apanage comes from Pommery's best 20 cru's whereas the Brut Royals fruit comes from 40 cru's. The Brut Apanage also differs from the Brut Royal where it has 6 grams/litre of residual sugar where the Brut Royal has about 10. And all the fruit is from vineyards owned by Pommery (Pommery is the second largest holder of vines in Champagne with over 200 hectares under vine).

The main selling point though is that it tastes mucho fantastico! This champagne is a classic aperitif wine, its just that simple! Clean, linear, and just ripper; thats all I got, its that good.

So, if you are in Melbourne next week, you can start by heading to Grossi Florentino's Cellar Bar where they will be pouring the wine, or if you are lucky enough to have a booking at Ezard you can order a bottle there too. And another thing, you won't be able to buy this in retail - sorry!

Season of Stout - Monteiths Black Beer, NZ

So, we find ourselves yet again in the middle of a long cold winter. And in this winter I have had two constents; Masterchef on Network 10 and Monteiths Black Beer; my daughter calls it the Masterchef beer - bless!

Now this is my first 'Season of Stout' post this winter, and I don't quite think it is a stout, but it's black. So the reason for it taking this long is simply I have not been drinking anything else; quite easy the pick of winter.

It reads on the back label that the good boys from the West Coast (NZ, not the Perth boys) use five premium malts. I'm not all over brewing, but that sounds like a lot to me. What would I know it turns out a friend recently told me; what would I know indeed. What i do n]know however, is that this beer is jam packed with gorgeous chocolate and coffee aroma's with more of this in the palte along with burnt toffee and licorice make this beer a fair dinkum cracker! Too easy!

Drink now
Drink with roast beef leftovers or freshly shucked oysters - now thats a Susan if there ever was one!
About $18 a six-pack 5.2%v/v

Belated Bastille Day 2010 - Jean Grivot Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru 2002

Yes, I know I am a couple of days late for my Bastille Day entry, but I gotta’ tell you, I have been flat chat busy with work, family and yes, a Bastille Day celebration on Tuesday night at the NGV.

So without further ado, here is my 2010 Bastille Day post; Jean Grivot Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru 2002. I picked this up a few years ago on www.langtons.com.au for a miserly $210 a bottle – just the one bottle I’m afraid – and sensibly put it aside in a dark place. And like so many things in life these days, I completely forgot I had it until about two months ago when I was searching for a bottle of Barolo and shabam, right before my eyes was this beauty (as to was the Barolo I was looking for).

To tell you the truth, I didn’t grab my note book and enter in my thoughts; instead I just savoured what an amazing wine this truly was. And that’s just it. I don’t remember it for being savoury or sappy or tart; I remember it just tasting absolutely gorgeous. That’s why this wine is the perfect example why people like you and me fork out handfuls of cash for single bottle treats. People find it hard to believe I would spend this much on a bottle of wine, but it was a bottle of wine like this that revealed its true power to a friend of mine about eight years ago.

The story was that this friend really did not like drinking sparkling wine – ergo champagne. He thought it was basically just soda water mixed with dry white wine. But it was the day he had a glass of Krug 1990, a truly magnificent wine that changed him forever. I still recall the look on his face when he sipped his first sip; his eyes widened, his jaw tensed and he was simply a changed man. Not 10 minutes after this experience, he turned to me and said, ‘You bastard. How can I go back and drink a beer or a shiraz now that I have had this’. And it’s true. Ever since then when I have gone over to his house, there in the fridge I will find a bottle of champagne; every time!

I do love my wine, and I do enjoy the good things in life, and the Jean Grivot Clos de Vougeot is one of those good things. So, a salute to you France for making such beautiful, beautiful wine. Bravo!

And.....



Oui, je sais que je suis à quelques jours de retard pour mon entrée de la fête nationale, mais je gotta ' vous dire, j'ai été occupé par le travail, la famille et Oui, une célébration de la fête nationale mardi soir à la GMV plat chat.

Sans plus attendre, voici mon 2010 post fête nationale ; Jean Grivot Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru 2002. J'ai ce capté quelques années sur www.langtons.com.au pour un avare de 210 $ par bouteille – juste une bouteille je crains – et judicieusement mettre de côté dans un endroit sombre. Et comme pour beaucoup de choses dans la vie de ces jours, j'ai complètement oublié je s'il avait jusqu'à environ deux mois lorsque j'étais recherche pour une bouteille de Barolo et shabam, droit devant mes yeux était cette beauté (qui était le Barolo je cherchais).

Pour vous dire la vérité, je n'a pas récupérer mon livre de note et entrez dans mes pensées ; je déguster plutôt juste quel un vin incroyable c'était vraiment. Et c'est juste. Je ne me souviens d'être savoureux ou sappy tart ; je me souviens il vient dégustation absolument magnifiques. C'est pourquoi ce vin est le parfait exemple, pourquoi les gens comme vous et moi, fourche hors handfuls de trésorerie pour seule bouteille traite. Gens du mal à croire je serait passer ce bien sur une bouteille de vin, mais il s'agissait d'une bouteille de vin comme cela qui a révélé son pouvoir de véritable à un ami à moi il y a environ huit ans.


L'histoire était que cet ami ne pas aime boire de vin mousseux – érgothérapie champagne. Il pensait que c'était fondamentalement juste soude eau mélangée avec un vin blanc sec. Mais c'était la journée qu'il avait un verre de 1990 Krug, un vin vraiment magnifique qui lui a changé pour toujours. Je me rappelle encore l'aspect sur son visage lorsqu'il sipped son premier sip ; ses yeux s'élargi, sa mâchoire tensed et c'était simplement un homme modifié. Pas de 10 minutes après cette expérience, il s'est tourné vers moi et dit, ' vous bâtard. Comment puis-je revenir en arrière et boire une bière ou un shiraz maintenant que j'ai eu cette '. Et c'est vrai. Depuis puis quand j'ai passée à sa maison, il dans le réfrigérateur va trouver une bouteille de champagne ; chaque fois !

J'aime la mon vin, je jouissent-ils les bonnes choses de la vie et le Jean Grivot Clos de Vougeot est l'un de ces bonnes choses. Donc, un hommage à France vous permettant de ces vins belle et magnifique. Bravo !