G'day. If you're new here, and you are interested in the Melbourne food and drink scene you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or the email newsletter below. Thanks for visiting and enjoy eating and drinking in Melbourne. Cheers.
Barbeques should be used year round, Vivi’s right. As host of Wine Blogging Wednesday#23 Vivi’s set the challenge of matching wines with barbeque food.
Last night I wasn’t barbequeing but there was a lot of griddled (broiled) meat on the menu while out at supper. One two inch thick porterhouse, a similarly thick eye fillet and some kind of veal T-bone. Big meat means big wine doesn’t it?
The thing about seared flesh – especially when my mates are drunk in charge of the food – is that it can present some unique challenges. I always take the detail of cooking this type of food seriously. But most of the barbies I attend are pretty awful featuring overcooked meat, charcoal sausages, coming to think of it, overcooked and charcoal everything.
To take on this greasy tomato ketchup smeared challenge the wine has to be bigger than usual and there where the Aussie Shiraz comes in.
Ah, I can see a Mr Parker’s ears are pricking up.
So there we were at our local Italian, Cicciolina’s (130 Acland Street
St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria +61 3 9525 3333) a restaurant with more panache and better steaks than my BBQ mates. Here we surf the wine menu to find a 2002 Jasper Hill Shiraz is there for A$110 (about US$80). In the shops you can pick-up these wines for about A$65 (US$48).
My friend Ian: “It is a big wine. I not one that I like… I’m trying to think of a mood that would want me to drink that again.”
Obviously this wine smacks us in the face. It’s too young and too powerful for us. We’re feeling a bit silly and out of our depth.
We shouldn’t have even thought about what we were about to do. The man behind Jasper Hill, Ron Laughton is a Heathcote and Australian wine making pioneer. He’s just been inducted into the local food and drink hall of fame.
Laughton’s wines have never been the cheapest. His Shiraz vineyards, established in 1975, yield about half a tonne to the acre. It gives higher concentrations of colour and flavour. He told me last year for The Australian newspaper: “That means my grapes per tonne are expensive and at the top end of the price range and my wines then have to be expensive to match it.”
The restaurant staff aren’t looking. We dilute the Jasper Hill with some tap water. Suddenly, the flavours of the food surface. Still it is a bit much for us. Yes, we wished we had ordered the Barolo.
We try to leave it there for the staff to drink but apparently they have plenty. They cork it. We bring it Home and crack open something more palatable, a plummy and much lighter Foxey’sHangout 2003 Shiraz from the Mornington Peninsula that still slaps us around a bit ,but not too hard.
But if you need something to hide those greasy charred, tomato ketchup flavours then this is the one for you. And at 14.5 per cent alcohol by volume you might get pretty pissed too.
And the remainder of the wine? I gave it to a serial BBQ offender down the street.
Tell me what you would do? Do you like this kind of stuff? And who is this Robert Parker guy anyway?
wine blogging wednesday, wbw#23, wbw, wine, Australian Wine, food and wine shiraz
No related posts.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ll tell you what a mate of mine did with some leftover Craiglee whilst we were on holidays together. We’d had the bottle with dinner, but didn’t finish it. Later on we sat on the porch drinking Tequila, watching the bats harvest their dinner from around the street light, discussing the meaning of Tequila, I mean, err life. We went to bed about 1.30am. The next day when we were woken by our respective wives, he went to the kitchen and poured the remaining Craiglee down the sink. Horrified I asked him why he did that. Startled he looked at me and said he didn’t know.
What a waste - you could have tried it with Tequila or Coke like they do in China!