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 […]
Wine
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, […]
Sauce fit for a Bourbon; steak fit for Uncle Monty
Merde! I forgot some links and I’ve opened as can of worms here. Huguenots, Bourbons…religious wars and bad French. Several regional dishes were planned but a late night meant an unexpected demand from J (avec a hangover) for steak au frites avec sauce béarnaise. Actually, she wanted a steak haché or probably a royale with cheese, but I’m a fascist and I’m cooking for IMBB23 over at Cucina Testa Rossa. Although the origins may be obscure they are attributed to […]
Why I ignored fashion and chose grapefruit over peaches
The occasion to celebrate Viognier with wine brand Yalumba. There we were in Melbourne’s most hyped new restaurant, Longrain, when I snapped this pic. It was a fitting venue for such a chic grape, the wine that Brett Easton Ellis drinks in his latest work, Lunar Park. If you believe this book Easton Ellis’ work – even the compellingly violent American Psycho – is about fashion. So Viognier must be near its peak in the US. Australia will probably be […]
Always choose a wine by its label
I find wine labels pretty exciting and this Wine Blogging Wednesday #16 even more so. I once worked in a marketing type job and was involved in some brand development. The idea was to imagine what the bottle’s label would have been like, say, a couple of hundred years previously. With that in mind we could develop a label that communicated heritage, quality and all that guff. Winemakers are split between heritage look labels and funky designs. There are plenty […]
How to drink it. Or how I learnt to ignore the whisky bore within
Who looks the plonker: the whisky bore who drinks the oldest single malt within reach or the person who likes it with a splash of coke? Well here’s a thing. The guys who make the world’s whisky when down the pub have a choice of mixer on the bar: a jug of water or a bottle of lemonade. They choose, of course, the lemonade because that’s what they like best, according to whisky maker Ian Williams manager of Home of […]
Grange Hermitage 1990
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Snobbery comes with the terroir
Stephen Shelmerdine: prices influenced by the tangible and the intangible I’d link to this story I wrote for The Australian but can’t find one. So here is the unedited version: Take two wines from the same region, a few kilometres apart. Both are top-notch drops. One costs $30; the other nearer $50. Stephen Shelmerdine, managing director, Shelmerdine wines, with vineyards in Heathcote and the Yarra Valley, says it’s a marketing decision. “But it’s informed by a range of factors some […]
The naked winemaker: Pierre Naigeon
If you go down to the Yarra Valley today… Well a couple of months ago you may have seen this Frenchman stark bollock naked jumping out of a vat full of Shiraz. He was cherry red. As he described this to a lunch of wine journalists, plus flamboyant society hairdresser Lillian Frank, nobody flinched. That surprised me. Australian winemakers have become the masters of vast steel vats, mechanical agitation, or at least having the modesty to don a wetsuit before […]