Happy 2014th birthday, Jesus!
What we'll drink in your honour;
please forgive our forgetful greed
by PHILIP WHITE
So. Back to that time of year when the market place, Joe Hockey* and the Christian church corral us all into a spendfest too many of us simply cannot afford. Fortunately, this is diluted by the gentle sound of cricket on the radio, and, in my case, the croaking and squawking of a treeful of baby galahs being fed. The blackbirds in my porch are on their third set of chicks; the welcome swallows in the eave are raising their second lot. And with the flowering of their favourite Melaleuca, the New Holland honeyeaters are back en masse. Since a marauding cat chewed up most of the superb faireywrens the remains of that perfectly-named lot have quite wisely moved along.
I do miss the tiny male, however, cheekily hopping
through the casement to extract miniscule morsels from the carpet around my
feet as I work. He was smaller than my big toe.
The Superb Faireywren cock, and below, their nest pillaged by cats ... while they seem to like putting blue stuff in their nests, the males pick yellow flowers and dance with them and wave them around to lure new spouses ... the little bloke who used to visit me even tried to pick yellow bits of my dishcloth from the clothesline ... for Exmess, give the wee birdies a break: keep your damn cat inside ... photo Marie Linke
Which is to say there is life parallel to Exmess if you
bother to look outside, or at least dare to open the door.
In my line of work, it's that time when editors
feverishly expect one to come up with miracle drink suggestions that have
mysteriously eluded mention the other fifty-one weeks of the year.
So let's have a look back at 2014 and remind ourselves of
some inexpensive standouts that will be perfectly entertaining holiday
tinctures if there's any bits left to tinct.
At the risk of being repetitious - I've probably
recommended this for 35 consecutive summers - it's time for Riesling on ice
with a splash of soda. Being in a serious Riesling state, it's tricky advising
locals which brand to pursue as everyone already has a favourite, but we are
fortunate in having producers like Pikes, Paulettes, Sevenhill and O'Leary
Walker knocking out exemplary wines of consistent quality: in the last few
vintages I've seen my favour once again fall to the eastern side of Clare, with
those Polish Valley makers offering wines of freakish consistency and beauty.
The exemplary O'L-W Drs' Cut is as good as it gets, and not so cheap, but there
are many beauties at lower prices, including their standards from Polish Valley
and Watervale.
Not to mention the cracker Boston Bay they made from the Ford
family's Port Lincoln vineyard: that one hit the Winestate Riesling of the Year
gong, cleaning up all comers from New Zealand and Australia.
The Fabulous Fordies celebrate their big Riesling gong at the hottest new restaurant in town, Sean's Kitchen ... photos Philip White
And then there's
that elegant Holland Creek beauty from Paracombe, and of course there's no
better way to drink east into Eden Riesling than to start on top of Mengler's
Hill at McLean's Farm.
Three rosés knocked my socks off; the thought of them
makes me very thirsty: the crunchy Longview Boatshed Nebbiolo Rosato, and the
Grenache-based beauties from Longhop and Charles Melton, neither of which are
raspberry-simple and sweet, but perfectly appetising, elegant and dry. A big
block of ice won't go astray in these, either.
Speaking of Grenache, this was its year. Finally, growers
are seeing it as something other than a low-grade Shiraz, and winemakers are
learning of its more supple, satisfying nature if it's picked earlier and made
with respect and some gastronomic intelligence. To plug my own landlord, Peter
Fraser is continuing his determined rewrite of the Grenache book here at
Yangarra. Ex-Hardy's and Wirra Wirra winemaker Paul Carpenter launched his new Long
Line brand with a beauty called Albright's, but the king-hit came under Twelftree
livery from Two Hands of Marananga, with a ravishing six-pack of wines from the
best Grenache vineyards the maker could locate in McLaren Vale and the Barossa.
These more elegant forms of the variety are all good
summer replacements for the types of brutal Shiraz which will dangerously
threaten your hydration scale in the coming heat.
2014 was also the year in which we finally saw some good
coming of this country's belated discovery of various Italian varieties. Coriole
and the new megacoolbuzzbrand, Jericho, both released beautiful Fiano whites
while Mark Day's all-Italian Eccolo trinity includes a brilliant Garganega, the
prime white ingredient of Verona's Soave.
Italianate reds that caught my greedy gaze came from
various uphill directions: the Fox Gordon Nero D'Avola Tash Mooney made from
Caj Amadio's Kersbrook vineyard set a delicious new standard for that variety,
while the spacy John Gilbert (in post-vintage repose, below) kept at it with his delicious blends and straight
varietals at By Jingo near Wistow.
But my true Roman star was a new one on me: J. Petrucci
& Son's rad McLaren Flat Colorino is one of those entertaining inky brutes
that for some reason drinks beautifully after a touch of the ice bucket, an
extreme rarity among reds of such persistent tannin. It manages deep intensity at
cellar temperature or just slightly chilled without being gloopy and thick.
Joe Petrucci, McLaren Flat vigneron, with his son Michael ... photo Philip White
Two stables which win my top gong for sheer persistent
value are the brave new works of Rhys
Howlett at Small Change wines, and the Torzi-Matthews-Freeland mob at Mt
McKenzie: their Longhop, Old Plains and Torzi-Matthews products prove that you
don't have to resort to Hungry Dans to get really good hand-made wines starting
below $20, which is the cost of three or four beers.
Speaking of which: It's more than the intention of
drinking local that sees me recommending the beautiful beers of Goodiesons:
this Sand Road, McLaren Flat brewery can do no wrong in the suds department.
Their Pilsener is de rigueur at Casa
Blanco, just for starters. Enthusiasts who feel obliged to taste every beer in
the new craft genre should plan an afternoon there on the Goodiesons deck by
the creek. The other impressive beer was the hearty, creamy, limited edition
Botanic Ale made from barley grown in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens and
available there in the restaurant or at the Lobethal Bierhaus.
The other notable aspect of the year was the boom of
hippy wines: cloudy 'natural' creations which seem to live in the hope that as
a group, they may eventually become a sort of Cooper's Pale of the wine world.
My Exmess gift to you is my reminder that it is not compulsory to drink these.
It is entirely possible to make preservative-free organic and biodynamic wines
which are not murky with protein haze and have a shelf life much longer than
unpasteurised milk. Which is a handicap many of these Very Old Wave newbies
unfortunately boast.
Finally, with all the money you've just saved drinking wines
at such low prices, consider A year in
the life of Grange, the book Milton Wordley photographed and published, and
I wrote. This has won numerous international awards, including the Best In The
World award for wine book photography at the Gourmand international book fair
held this year in Beijing, and brought home gold and silver medals from the
Independent Publishers' Book Fair in New York. A hand-made, hand-stitched,
hand-numbered luxury Adelaide product, this large tome will add an aspirational
tone to anybody's tree. Through our listed stockists only, we're chopping $185 from the price until December 17th. Order through
your independent liquor store (Melbourne Street, East End and Edinburgh for
starters), or visit the Penfolds tasting rooms at Magill or Nuriootpa, and
it'll be yours for $600. Which is less than a bottle of Grange (the usual
price), and about $167,400 cheaper than the amazing Penfolds Ampoule, which,
fortunately for all those tempted, has sold out.
I dare you. You could make Joe Hockey happy.
The author and photographer/publisher Milton Wordley with our New York book show bling ... photo Gail Gago
*FOOTNOTE: Having failed to get his kick-the-poor budget through Australia's Senate, and doubling the national deficit inside one year, arch-conservative Australian treasurer Joe Hockey advised struggling Australians “Don’t let Santa down, go out there and spend for Christmas.”
1 comment:
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