Food & Drink. Travel. Est. 2005
There’s a lot of stuffy tradition associated with wine and what food to match it with. It stems from the 18th and early 20th century dominance of France and the rest of Europe in winemaking, and the stuffiness of the English. Plus, before food and wine traditions developed in Europe, roads and the car opened up what were often isolated regions. This meant that the food and wine regions were very localised and both developed to complement each other. In […]
Voice of the People at The Melbourne Wine Room. Try it. Wine, most of us drink it. Some of us love it. But many of us are intimidated by it, or the wankery that comes with labels, hundreds of grape varieties and the language of the wine critic. All we know is that we like that particular red or white while slumped on the sofa watching TV and we wouldn’t mind drinking something similar down the pub. Or wine bar. […]
Not sauvignon blanc grapes Some say that the grapes are trodden by the feet of hobbits. Others that it is simply made with their pee. What can’t be explained what magic has been invoked to make a New Zealand wine has become the most popular quaff of the Aussie – Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc from the Marlborough region. Marlborough sauvignon blanc is becoming more popular by the day. In 2008 sales increased by 52.3% in 2008 and 143% in the […]
Wine with Indian food? Even seasoned food writers seem to think you can’t eat anything spicy – let’s call it curry – without an ice cold glass of lager. Certainly normal punters think it’s laughable. Last year in my mum’s Indian local, out of 150 curry munchers only myself and a blond hairdresser were spotted with a glass of wine, white dare I say. The problem in India is that wine is expensive. Actually that’s not the only problem – […]
Once upon a time there was a big wine store on Chapel St Prahran. It was called Dan Murphy’s and was pretty flash. Then it was bought by Woolworth’s and moved into a smart new warehouse building across the road – it was the flagship. It is still there but now the flagship is in East Malvern (811-823 Dandenong Rd) and it has a flash tasting room for all the posh wines it sells. I was there Monday for a […]
“Judging Australian wine shows is the closest I’ve ever come to hand-to-hand combat.” So says wine writer Tim Atkin the Uk’s The Observer: “No one actually exchanges punches, but the verbal fisticuffs can be brutal. If you’re brought up to be polite and to consider someone else’s point of view, the bare-knuckle opinions can come as a shock. ‘I thought that wine was fucked, mate,’ a fellow judge told me after I’d advanced the claims of one particular Shiraz/Viognier blend.”
How much should you pay for wine? Or let’s put it this way: How much more than the cost of food should wine be? In Melbourne the cost of a main course in a restaurant is fast catching up with the cost of wine. If I’m feeling poor I may spend $40 to $50 on a bottle in a restaurant. Feeling rich and I may double the figure. To put this into context in the kinds of restaurants where I’m […]
Veteran food writer Rita Erlich talks good sense in The Age over absurdly long wine lists. Giant wine tomes are best avoided: “Even a speed-read list would help – say, a dozen whites and reds, chosen because they’re appropriate drinking and fairly priced. The longer the list, the higher the individual bottle prices, since stocking the cellar with thousands of bottles is expensive. Neither do I have much time for the wine list full of big company wines, available at […]
Hmmmm…should I even contemplate buying wine in Singapore airport. A couple of Batard Montrachets at about S$230…plenty of Petrus…the usual posh but sadly overpriced stuff. Take the excellent grapefruity Shaw & Smith M3 2004 Chardonnay which in Australia costs about A$38 (about S$48). In the airport it costs S$69. What the hell is happening? I was under the misconception that stuff was meant to be cheaper in duty free. And by the way, why such a clichéd selection of wines […]