Look closely. That’s 5 litres of chablis for under $10! Chablis. Not.

I’m not quite sure how they get away with this. What gets me is how awful the food looks. Do I really want to buy the wine? No.

Do I want it to taste brilliant? Yes.

But because it looks so awful I can’t bring myself to do it. Call me a snob but it looks like the kind of food that Gordon Ramsay pukes up on his Kitchen Nightmares.

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I’d actually been a bit off Heathcote Shiraz after I was last year boffed fairly and squarely in the face by one. But I’d recently the virtual winemaker Adam Foster, who is also the sommelier at local restaurant Three, One, Two and then I saw it or sale at Annie Smithers. I picked up a bottle.

And I was pleasantly surprised by this wine which is made on the premises of another winemaker, Bresse at Harcort (which is another story). The alcohol content wasn’t too high and while it is full bodied, it wasn’t too big a red wine and displayed very subtle characteristics. Who ever said i contradict myself? It had some very attractive spicy and dried fruit aromas.

Perhaps, it’s time to re-open my palate to Heathcote wines.

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One of the things I like about eating out is to be challenged by new food and wine experiences. Some restaurants don’t manage either but Annie Smithers Bistrot in Kyneton manages both. In fact it offers a wine by the glass from a grape that is unique in Australia to a single winemaker, Gapsted.

We’re talking about a Russian grape Saperavi. I enjoyed the wine so much I bought a bottle to take home and later via the web ordered a case.

To date my only knowledge of Russian grapes has amounted to Georgian Champagne. And thanks to Jak, who traveled through communist Russia, I assume that the wine tastes like the food which she says tastes like ants.

But this wine is very different. While the grapes in Russia are meant to have a high acid content they seem to have adapted to life in Australia well. The wine itself is a deep red, nearly as dark as a Shiraz. The taste has some similarities with Cabernet Sauvignon with hints of mint although it predominantly has dried fruit flavours. It tastes much like a mature Christmas cake, a real spiciness (allspice perhaps), but without the sweetness.
On Sunday June 10, the Queen’s Birthday weekend, the winemaker is having a BBQ and shed sale. Could be worth a visit.

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Sure enough a giant role comes up from the kitchen. We all rip handfuls of the stuff and shove it in our glasses already charged with port. One bright spark keeps a glass without the film so we have a control. Initially the results seem good and a discussion ensues. We all agree that the film has  removed some of the corking from the port.
Is it a chemical on the wrap? My own suggestion was that it is the electrical charge on the wrap does something.

Home to Google where I find, via Winecast which experiments with Gladwrap, this from the LA Times (registration required)

“In a glass pitcher, wad up roughly a square foot of Saran Wrap or other polyethylene plastic wrap. Pour the tainted wine over the plastic wrap in the pitcher. Expose all of the wine to the plastic wrap by gently swirling the wine in the pitcher for five or 10 minutes. The more pronounced the taint, the longer the wine should be exposed to the plastic wrap. For stubborn cases, repeat the plastic soak with a fresh wad of wrap.”

Apparently, polyethylene “absorbs TCA like a sponge”. One company is even developing Polyethylene filters to help remove TCA from wine. I also discover, via Chowhound, that TCA disappears when wine is cooked.

I can’t find anything that describes the chemistry of the process. Any ideas?

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Can Michael taste the difference between various decanted wines? The results are surprising.

When I next have a weekend with some time I quite fancy extending the experiement and inviting a couple of wine pros over to help judge:

1. The effect of freezing a wine on the ageing process.

2. Microwaving wine vs decanting wine.

3. Comparisons of various Riedel glasses (I’ll need to borrow them) vs various wines.
4. Riedel glasses versus cheap glasses.

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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 sneak preview of the Grange Hermitage 2002 – which costs $525 in most stores – but is a fair bit cheaper at Dan’s. Here’s what we drank in reverse order.

Penfolds Grange Hermitage 2002
The equation of taste versus cost seems to have been solved by the marketing geniuses at Penfolds who charge A$525 a bottle. The wine itself is a jam jar full of summer fruits with tones of tobacco that takes a least 15 years to mature. Is it good? Yes. Is it worth it? The answer is in the eye of the beholder.

Penfolds Grange Hermitage 1971
This is a real treat, the vintage that the inventor of Grange Hermitage Max Schubert said was the best ever. The colour has mellowed but the flavour is still powerful, so much so that I’m sure that Robert Parker would have spunked his pants over it on release. What is really amazing is that it originally sold for little over $70 a case and Jeff who was there bought ten. He seduced his wife with a bottle. When I opened my 1990 I didn’t even get a handjob. I must be keeping the wrong company.

Penfolds Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon
This is actually a pretty amazing wine and made the Chateau Lafite that it followed appear very flat. It’s big and full of fruit but doesn’t pack the annoying punch that so many of these wines do. I’m going to call this poor man’s Grange as its made by Penfolds, costs a little under $200 a bottle and is pretty damn good.

Chateau Lafite Rothschild 2000
This is the wine that Robert Parker did spunk his pants over giving 100 points. I tasted this before the Red Aussie wines and do tend to prefer my French wines. But on this occasion I kept my flies zipped.

Bass Phillip Reserve Pinot Noir 1994
Bass Phillip is one of the top producers but I couldn’t help feel that this one had peaked. Do any Aussie pinots keep this long?

Giaconda Chardonnay 2002
At this point this wine is kinder to the nose than the palate. Perhaps this will change with age. In a lesser way than Grange, this is a cult Chardonnay and yet again I find myself dealing with the economics of cost versus all those winey things.

Penfolds Bin 05A Chardonnay 2005
If you like Aussie chardonnay then this is for you. The oak is there but subtle.

Krug NV
Hey, I’ve just arrived by bicycle. I’m just going to enjoy this one thanks very much.

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Foxeys hangout cellar door: just a hour and a bit from Melbourne.

We drank it with lobster with Gordon Ramsay’s saffron Aioli.
But wait this gets better. The Lee brothers will even allow you to custom make your own sparkling. You can watch the disgorgement and select the dosage of sugar you’d prefer to put in each bottle. What you do is taste the house range sparklers plus some dosed at differing levels. You can even select the blend of the wine.
As the Foxy boys say on their website: “Sweeter? Dryer? White? Pink? It’s up to you to create the chemistry that’s perfect for your palate. Foxeys Hangout will keep a record of your specifications so that we can recreate your unique blend should you wish to re-order…”
If that’s not enough for you I’m going to break the rules. There are still champagnes that are made with passion and avoid the generic qualities of the mass marketed varieties.
Just go out and swig down a bottle of Jacques Selosse Substance grand cru brut made from 100 per cent chardonnay grapes. The bottle I tried with my, as yet unnamed, wine group was different to any champagne I’ve ever had. In fact it tastes a bit like a white burgundy.
As one of the group (I can’t remember who because we weren’t spitting and I later fell off my bicycle) said: “This is the other side of champagne.”
You can find it at The Melbourne Wine Room (125 Fitzroy St, St Kilda 3182 +61 3 9525 5599) at AU$400 a bottle.

PS: if you would like to win a copy of the spectacular new James Halliday’s Australian Wine Atlas RRP $79.95 (donated by Hardie Grant Books) go to my Menu of Hope entry. Prize code: AP37 I will post anywhere in the world.

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Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes and mistakes. Of course, the first one was hundreds of years ago when the grapes left to freeze on the vine. It looked like the second mistake was going to be the ice wine I bought for this Wine Blogging Wednesday #27 hosted this month by Kitchen Chick.
Being a southern hemisphere patriot I’d been looking for Tasmanian or New Zealand ice wine but couldn’t find either in my local bottle shop. The choice came down to two. There was a 375ml of the German version at $400. Seeing as I had just bought a wet suit for a similar amount to cope with the icy southern ocean I couldn’t afford that one.
I was forced into buying a wine from a place that I had no idea made any wine let alone a drinkable variety. I knew that Mike Myers is very funny and that moose are kinda amusing. I knew that maple Syrup was tasty and that the Mounties were kinda cool.
But I was tempted to walk away rather than spend $90 odd pacific pesos (Aussie dollars) on a half bottle of Canadian ice wine. A sweet wine that was sparkling to boot. To be honest I thought it was more than funny and that the joke would be on me.
Yes, I bought a 2002 half bottle of Inniskillin sparkling ice wine from the Niagara Peninsula. Apparently it was the first VQA ( Vintners Quality Alliance) sparkling ice wine produced in Canada.
And that was my second mistake assuming it would be bad. This wine is one of the best dessert wines I have tasted. It is sweet but the bubbles – not as intense as champagne but nevertheless tickling my tongue – cut through the sweetness to make it much more drinkable ( in volume at least) to the usual flat variety. I really wish I’d been able to buy a whole bottle.
Then there was tarte tatin, a sweet caramalised tart a mistake in itself. I made no mistake in following Albert Roux’s instructions in caramelising sugar and butter, sprinkling it with green peppercorns, slices of ripe mango and (his variation instead of puff pastry) almond frangipani mix. The baking time for the four individual tarts was followed exactly and the result was good. The combination of caramel with the sweet mango cut through by the peppercorn’s spice and complimented by the almond base.

The big brown cow pat

The final mistake was the best of the lot. My second bake was a single large tart. I baked it for too long and it came out over caramalized. It looked like a great big brown cow pat. The edges were dark and chewy.
Boy, did it taste good. The chewy caramel and the spice of the pepper and the tropical overtones of mango were perfect with the subtle ripe summer fruit flavours of the ice wine. This was no mistake. It was divine intervention.

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“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.”

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The true test of quality of a good restaurant is it’s ability to cater for a a crowd. I’m talking about 100 or so people in one room all expecting to be fed at the same time. And so it was unexpected to be served such excellent wild barramundi at Comme (7 Alfred Place, Melbourne +61 3 9631 4010).
Comme one of those cool joints hidden down an alleyway. It occupies the space that housed Mietta’s, a legend in Melbourne’s restaurant history. Mietta O’Donnell, who died in a car crash in 2001, had rock star status here as a restaurateur and even ran her own eponymously named restaurant guide.
This event was to celebrate winemaker John Vickery’s 51 consecutive vintages and ten years at Richmond Grove. Vickery is Australia’s Mr Riesling. The 2005 Richmond Grove Limited Release Watervale Riesling is amazing for it’s citrus zest. But it was the 1998 – the aged ones always get me – version of this drop that was the stunner with the citrus marrying with the scent of Asian herbs (although that could have been from my starter). I may even have had a second glass.

Wild barramundi

The wild barramundi, served with an olive oil mash, sauce vierge, saffron and mussels was cooked to perfection. The texture and flavour was what simply cannot be achieved with the farmed version of the fish.
I also thought I was fed up with pork and duck after my Golden Plate experience. But what I was over was bad pork and duck. In the Thai salad of tiger prawns, sweet pork and green mango the pork sat there in the background content to play a supporting role. It was just as it should be.
The pan-fried scallops came with a crispy duck confit and sauce bordelaise.

Food fascist
Farmed Barramundi may be “sustainable” but their texture and muddy flavour are bloody awful.

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