While most of Europe and the Hunter Valley doomed by global warming in the next few decades (this could be a good thing. For the most part the Hunter’s quite ugly and there are only a handful of wines worth drinking there. ), other parts of this red and dusty land may just about outlive me. Decanter reports: Southern Hemisphere temperatures in vineyards in New Zealand, southern Australia, parts of Chile and South Africa will rise more slowly due to […]
Month: March 2006
Broad shouldered, macho and the smell of saddle. All the bull
Cosme Palacio y Hermanos 2002 is a perfectly good rioja. Its traditional label is inviting. A tall bottle, it’s everything you’d expect from a rioja. And the taste has all that leather/tack room nostalgia. But wait. There’s more! At least with the Bodegas Palacio reserva especial 1995. Also a rioja, first is the bottle. It’s not as tall and elegant as the Cosme Palacio. But it has this attraction. It is very dark, almost opaque. It is solid, very solid, […]
The confronting choice: Knives or chopsticks?
What do you prefer to eat with? Sometimes I just want to rip in their with my hands. Take a shrimp/prawn. Am I really going to piss around peeling it with a knife and fork? Aren’t I going to rip that rustic sour dough and dip it in the olive oil? Tiny lamp chops make me lose control. Cut out the middleman and shove it straight in your gob. I mentioned a few entries ago about the ludicrous guest nights […]
Weekend grape glut
Inspired but humbled, I drive back to Melbourne. We’ve been staying in the gold fields in Bendigo for M’s wedding. The art museum exhibits Cecil Beaton’s portraiture. His grasp on light, iconography and semiotics is astonishing, saying more about the subject that their own likenesses. Bruised, we roar through the apple capital of Victoria, Harcourt and pull over in a plume of dust to buy some cheap fruit. But it is that low winter sun that catches my eye. It […]
Not the Barri Gòtic
There’s something about those dark back alleys that get to me. My first taste for it was in Europe, the alleyways of ancient Italian towns. The south of France. And who can resist the pull of Barcelona’s Barri Gòtic. And so it is with Melbourne a city that hides laneways off laneways, among jumbled warehouses built when the city was a Gold town. Hosier Lane is probably one of the most interesting, covered with stencil art and filled with various […]
Destination Vietnam. Tips wanted.
On the spur of the moment I’ve booked 17 days in Vietnam. I’ve got the Lonely Planet guidebook but seeing as the writers don’t actually get to stay or eat in 90 per cent of the places they write about I’d love some inside tips on places to stay and eat and even cooking classes. We are travelling by train from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. We might get up to the Chinese border. Perhaps we’ll even bump into […]
The future is foie gras
Why should a duck symbolise Melbourne or Australia? You may be wondering this if you caught the opening of the Commonwealth Games on TV. And Michael Leunig didn’t divulge what he knows. The truth is that Australia is secretly the largest producer of some of the best duck foie gras you’ll find in the southern hemisphere or Asia/Pacific. Titter ye not. This is a fast growing industry which is hidden from the world because the RSPCA says it will prosecute […]
Best chocolate in Melbourne
Monsieur Truffe found my heart with darkness. His rich dark truffles are the best in Melbourne. Artisan chocolate shops are multiplying like rabbits but all of them are to fancy and too sweet in what they serve. Monsieur Truffe is very dark and very sinful. He recommends one single truffe a day. I find it difficult to to resist a packet each day – my dark northern European (Lithuanian) genes talking. I love the 70% but the 55% will probably […]
Don’t stall. Do oysters
Hurray! Oysters are back in season, ahem, down under. Actually, it is difficult to tell when they are out as most fishmongers stocks them whatever, even during the hot summer months when they are awful. Obviously, Australian’s aren’t discerning about this bivalve as most people either buy them in bottles or preshucked, lying their dead for hours and without those sexy salty juices. The best in Australia are from the cold waters of Tasmania. the worst from the warm waters […]