Sébastien Brunet Vouvray Arpent Sec 2010

So it's been, what, a week and a bit(stupid cookies disabled my blog posting) since the mighty Melbourne Storm beat the Canterbury Bulldogs. It was a great game. Beautiful weather. Great crowd. Beautiful break foot. I have just one more thing to say. SUFFER IN YA JOCKS GUS GOULD YA MISERABLE TWAT!!!!

There you go then. Where was I? Yes, the Sébastien Brunet Vouvray Arpent Sec 2010 is right now my favourite wine. This wine first came across my bow about 6 weeks ago when i had a tasting at Albert Street Food & Wine. it was a tasting I requested because I love Vouvray and needed a new one on the list (didn't get around to it I'm afraid). It was great. Still is.

Plenty going on in the nose with ripe locuts and creamy lees with a lick of mandarin peel. In the mouth there is more ripe locut dominant as well as more citrus at the end with mandarin and tangerine waxing the back palate. I love it.

It hasn't been mentioned for a while on this blog, but this wine gets a definite Susan with pork cutlets - fat on - with the Vouvray cutting through the fat and lifting and extending as well as Billy Slater did through the Bulldogs defence. In your face Gould you sucker of the sourest grapes; Chenin not one of those.

Drink with pork cutlets
Drink till 2018
98
Diam cork 12.33% v/v to be precise and $36 Blackheart & Sparrows, Brunswick

Domaine de la Chauvinière Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine Sur Lie 2007

“I find pleasure in things that are simple.” Stephan Jenkins

Pretty much says it all doesn’t it. The Domaine de la Chauvinière Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine Sur Lie 2007 is fresh and clean with citrus, honeydew and white oleander with a touch of phenolics about it on both nose and palate. By the way, the variety is not Muscadet but Melon de Bourgogne, a common misconception made here in Australia. Just a great little wine.

Drink with moules marinière while listening to Demolition by Ryan Adams
Drink till 2012
88-91
Good cork 12%v/v $20ish from Blackheart and Sparrows, Brunswick

Season of Soup - French Onion and Pichot Domaine Coteau de la Biche Vouvray Moelleux 2002

With each new day dawning to blue sky in cosmopolitan Brunswick, my daughter Imogen asks me if spring is now over and is summer coming sooo quickly. Well my dear, I am sorry to say this is Melbourne, home of the ‘G’, the upside down river and those glorious four seasons in one day....

‘.... lying in the depths of your imagination, Worlds above
and worlds below, the sunshine’s on the black clouds hanging
over the domain.
Even when you’re feeling warm, the temperature could drop away
Like four seasons in one day......’

'Four Seasons In One Day' Crowded House

So with one eye on a beach towel and the other on an umbrella, we in Melbourne are still in the throes of winter, which brings me to soup. But this is no ordinary ‘Season of Soup’ entry. Today is not only our favourite soup (Erin and me), but a Susan match that I reckon is one of the best!

French Onion Soup with Pichot Domaine Coteau de la Biche Vouvray Moelleux 2002 – a big mouthful, but a good one.

French onion soup is pretty much that, onions and lots of them!!!! This is sort of like risotto; lots of looking and lots of stirring. The key element to a good French Onion soup is making sure the pot and onions brown. So here is my French Onion soup.

· brown onions, plenty of them (14 serves four)
· olive oil
· flour, just a pinch
· Gruyere cheese
· butter, optional though
· salt to taste
· crusty bread
· water
· swimming goggles

After cutting up the multitude of onions, add a good glug of oil to the pot and heat. Add onions and add another glug of oil over the onions. Let it sit for a while on heat with the occasional stir. Once there is an obvious reduction in volume or the pot, add butter and season to taste. Keep stirring!! After a while the pot will start to brown over in the hot spots – this is good. Keep stirring.

Once you have the contents a good brown, add flour and stir for another five minutes. This thickens the contents of the pot so it is easier to reduce evenly. Add water to cover entire volume and add a few small cubes of Gruyere for a creamy edge. Reduce to a good ratio of onion and water. Grate some Gruyere over some bread and grill to your liking.

It is important to let the soup sit for a while so you don’t burn your tongue – this bugger is super hot just out of the pot.

Now the wine. Just to let you know that Vouvray is Chenin Blanc. Now Chenin Blanc in Australia gets a bad rap I reckon. Why you ask? Because we don’t get it; that’s at both levels – producing and drinking.

The very best Chenin Blanc’s come out of the Loire Valley in France. Now before you start thinking that I am banging on about French wines and how they are superior to ours (well yes), I’ll just remind everyone that in France they can only grow certain fruit in certain areas, unlike here where we can bloody grow anything any-bloody-where.

So back to the Loire Valley, and in particular to a little town called Vouvray. You punters out there may know this name from a couple of years ago when a nag by the same name was favourite in a couple of group 1 races. If you are like me and put a few bucks on it and are cursing the sound of the name ‘Vouvray’ (cos’ the mongrel didn’t salute once), I am sorry for bringing back bad memories.

Vouvray is situated on the Loire River just west of Tours in central France where Chenin Blanc is King. Here there are three styles, sec, demi-sec and Moelleux; dry, semi dry and Moelleux which is the sweetest of the three and by far the most sought after.

Moelleux wines can have up to 500 grams/litre of residual sugar in them, making them syrupy sweet and perfect with rich food such as Foire Gras.

This Pichot Moelleux has only 94 grams/litre of residual sugar, but this by no means makes it a light weight in this style. The colour is a beautiful light golden/straw with a yellowish hue coming through. The nose is super sweet with candied orange and saffron. Decanting this wine will benefit. After a while in the glass and decanter, this wine develops richness similar to Sauternes that produces a very warming mouth feel with glycerol, honey and marmalade coming through.

The reason I have given this combo the ‘Susan’ is that I reckon this pairing has got equal measure of richness – both develop a natural viscosity with time – and natural sweetness from the caramelised onions and candied orange in the wine. Ohh I do love it!!

Drink till 2032

94

Quality cork (blackened at tip is an indication that it spent time in underground cave)

$55 12.5% a/v

Fish Bone Fish + Chips and Chateau du Cléray-Sauvion 2007 Muscadet Sèrve et Maine

When I was a kid, Friday nights in the warmer months (most of them cos’ I grew up in Fremantle) meant extended games of cricket at the park, or if we were lucky, extended stays at the beach. These were days when kids could freely do their stuff without a nervous parent watching their every move. For me though, the real clincher was when mum would pull up in her beaten up Renault, change from her nurses outfit and walk out to the veranda and call my name to come in – the park and beach were both within hollering distance. My goodbyes done to Elias and Gabe, I would meet my mum, and sometimes my older sisters, at the Renault where we would head off in to town for F+C – Fish and Chips!!

In those days, Fremantle was over-run by that wild gang of hippies, ‘The Orange People’. It was also a place where local families could walk down South Terrace or The Esplanade without being run down by a tourist tram or three wheeler scooters. And it was also a time where the buskers would let you pass on by without threat of harm if you did not empty your pocket of coins in to the guitar case.

But Freo on Friday for me was all about Fish and Chips. And the two destinations were either The Freo Markets or Ciccerellos in Fisherman’s Harbour. Today the F+C at the Markets is now some craft stall and Ciccerellos is now a vast fast food styli outfit, but still producing the F+C that I remember – heaps of salt and heaps of vinegar!

Fast forward 30 years to last night where it was my turn to take the kids to get F+C. It has been quite some time since I have seen the butchers paper wrapping, with these days your order coming in a sought of rectangle box in a bag. And it is Fish Bone on Lygon Street Brunswick where my kids get their F+C in abox and an introduction to excess salt and vinegar.

Now there are not many F+C outlets in this area, with a few of them still using oil from when Ricky Martin was living ‘da vida loca’ or something like that. You know when someone is doing the right thing though when at 6pm on a Friday there are about 25 people waiting for their lot. I am not sure what cottonseed oil does in the frying process, apart from frying of course, but I gotta say that Fish Bone, for the last four years or so, easily has it over some of the more hoy-fa-loyting fryers south of the Yarra. And you know it is good when your four year old eats everything, including the fish.

On the crowds, it would definitely be smart to phone your order through, this way it gives you plenty of time to wonder up the road to ‘Blackheart and Sparrows’ and get yourself some refreshments. Now when I was a kid, the staple beverage with F+C was a Coke ice-cream spider – a scoop of vanilla ice-cream with Coke poured over the top; way cool I tell ya.

So with my palate evolving a little bit, the question is what type of wine will soak up all that salt and vinegar. Beer is always good with F+C, but for this exercise we are drinking wine. There has been a lot of discussion on the appropriate wine match to F+C on the web I have noticed, with some gerbil in the UK recommending Malbec. I think we will just leave that one alone. To me F+C need something that is light and fresh with a little bit of residual salt about it. This leaves you Semillon, Savvy B (last resort people), and what we had, Muscadet; in particular the Chateau du Cléray-Sauvion 2007 Muscadet Sèrve et Maine from Vallet in the Loire Valley.

Made ‘sur lie’, or on lees, and under the ‘Haute Culture’ label, the name of the maison, the Chateau du Cléray-Sauvion 2007 Muscadet Sèrve et Maine is exactly what you should drink with F+C. The colour is quite light – bone straw, which is what you would expect from a young Muscadet. The nose is quite complex with subtle oyster shell and grapefruit – the real salty citrus scent you look for I guess. The mouth is quite soft, with tingly acid opening up to more citrus in the way of grapefruit and lemon to soak up the salt and vinegar as needed.

With so many wines to choose from, Muscadet and F+C is definitely a ‘Susan’ match i.e. ‘this goes with that at Susan’ styli. And if you can get some oysters from your F+C, do it; Muscadet and oysters is a ‘Susan’ no-brainer also.

Fish Bone gets Two Birks
Drink till 2014
17.2/20

Erin's 40th at Esposito@toofeys - part 1

Fortieth birthdays are big occasions. This is obvious. People get dressed up, go and get their hair done (for an ungodly amount of money), buy a new pair of shoes or two and generally get caught up in the event. And why not! This birthday marks quite a mile stone in peoples live, similar to the 18th and the 21st birthdays. Yet the 40th is a birthday that is full of reflection, as opposed to starting a journey with a UDL can.

Six weeks ago, 24 of our friends and immediate family gathered at Esposito@Toofeys in Carlton and celebrated my true love’s 40th birthday. But this was no ordinary get together for lunch. With the help of Maurice Esposito in the kitchen and his front of house manager Michelle, 26 diners were treated to an 8 course degustation with matching wine (Maurice was kind enough to let me bring in our own wine) that was quite simply perfect.

About six weeks out from the day, I asked Erin what she wanted to so for her birthday. There was plenty of thought. There was little too-and-frowing. There were not too many options; party at our place – Nope, drinks at a pub/bar – nope, dinner at a restaurant? If we were going to do this, then it would have to be done properly. How about a dego I asked. OK Erin said. Done, now I just have to find a venue.

Toofeys was the second place I contacted with the first venue categorically stating they did not need our business, even though they averaged about 8 covers for Sunday lunch – obviously they did not need the $3,500 that was spent.

Next thing was to meet with Maurice and Michelle and work out a menu. With 20 odd people, there are always going to be some dietary requirements; vegetarians, pregnant women, gluten free and just plain ‘I don’t like that’ so all of this was laid out. Twenty minutes later we had the skeleton of the menu and of the wines also. Simple. And here it is with the matching wines -

Erin Taplin May 29th, 1969 with
Esposito at Toofeys May 31st, 2009


Tathra oyster; red wine vinegar, ginger, soy and sesame
Valdespino Manzanilla Delicioza, Jerez Spain


Chicken consommé with goats’ cheese tortellini, seared Greenlip abalone
Henrique’s & Henrique’s Bual 15 year old Madeira and
Bindi Sparkling Blanc de Blanc 1994, Macedon Ranges, Victoria

Mud Crab with green apple, avocado and spinach essence
Chateau Jolys Gros Manseng Sec 2006, Jurançon France


Wild Barramundi with braised fennel, salad of surf clams, baby mint
Tapanappa Chardonnay ‘Tiers’ 2007, Adelaide Hills SA

Porterhouse roasted, potato puree, exotic mushrooms and 50 year old balsamic
Yannick Amirault ‘Le Grand Clos’ Bourgueil Cabernet Franc 2006, Loire Valley France


Cheese: Bruny Island white mould cows’ cheese and
Healey’s Pyengana Cheddar

Callebaut white and milk chocolate semi freddo with chocolate sorbet
Mount Horrocks ‘Cordon Cut’ Riesling 2008, Clare Valley SA

As I commented before, Maurice kindly let us bring our own wine, something that saved us a pretty penny let me say. Matching wine and food is what I do, and I was very pleased that Maurice let me have some say in how the menu was constructed in order to get the most out of the wines. A lot of chefs will simply flat out refuse this, for what would a sommelier know about designing menu’s. Yeah, what would we know, we just bullshit our way through a service to sell booze!

Now the invitations. Invitations I learnt, are a serious matter. You just don’t send an email or a text and say, ‘hey, want to join us for lunch’. This is where the male and female brain is different – I would have probably done that. If I did my name would be mud.

Our good friend Fiona Sproles (http://fwoglegs.blogspot.com/) in absolutely no time came up with a fantastic invitation – just brilliant. Erin had requested everyone hold May 31, they obliged, and all we had to do was wait.

.... to be continued