CABERNET: RIGHT WING VERSUS LEFT

Click on Coonawarra limestone profile to see vid review of mighty Coonawarra and frivolous Langhorne Creek Cabernets

SEAFORD HEIGHTS: GUERILLA GARDENING

Small Smiting Of The Mighty ... Senator Xenophon Joins The Fray ... Vales Folk Plant Good Thing
by PHILIP WHITE

“Never underestimate the force of people power”, Senator Nick Xenophon told the press assembled to film a small demonstration at Seaford Heights last week. Fifty or sixty souls had quietly invaded a corner of the Fairmont Homes/Labor government’s proposed ghetto on the last piece of the best unplanted vineyard land in the McLaren Vale wine region. Pushing the Guerilla Gardening barrow of Groundswell SA, a new lobbying group formed to save such prime agricultural land from villa rash, wherever it is, Mr. X had donned his gumboots and was there in that rich chocolaty dirt, determinedly planting broad beans with the littlies.

“If you think you’re too small to make a difference,” he paraphrased Body Shop founder Anita Roddick, “try going to sleep with a mosquito. Here you have a group of very strongly-spirited community individuals who want to make a difference. You have all four networks here today. Hundreds of thousands of people around the state will see this from their living rooms tonight.

“These people are making a powerful point. In a democracy, it’s never too late to turn a stupid decision around. We should not be developing prime agricultural land. We should be putting more people in the square mile of the City of Adelaide.

“People come from all over Australia, from all over the world, to look at our wine regions. They don’t come here to look at more and more urban sprawl. So this stupid decision doesn’t make sense economically. It doesn’t make sense as far as food production goes. It doesn’t make sense to put more and more houses in these wine regions. I really believe there’s a tipping point happening here. If enough people get together, I believe we can force the government to reverse this stupid, stupid plan.

SENATOR NICK XENOPHON HOES HIS ROW FOR SEAFORD HEIGHTS, GROUNDSWELLsa, MORE INTELLIGENT PLANNING AND CONSERVATION AND THE PROTECTION FOREVER OF PRECIOUS PRIME FARMLAND.

“Eighty years ago, in the square mile of Adelaide, bounded by East, North, West and South Terraces, there were 46,000 residents living there. That was before high rise. Now, even with all the high rise apartments that we have, we’re down to 21,000. Imagine if there were 100,000 residents there. Five times as many as there are now. Imagine the buzz. But that’s sustainable. That’s less greenhouse gases. That’s people walking to work.

“Put people in Adelaide. In the city. And leave these regions to do what they should be doing: growing the best quality agricultural produce in Australia.”

Two days earlier, the Deputy Premier-Attorney-General Minister of Planning, Tourism and Food Marketing, John Rau, and Leon Bignell, the member for Mawson, presented the latter’s new plan to restrict housing in the Barossa to some of that region’s key residents, some business people and Mayor Brian Hurn. People left that meeting feeling up-beat and co-operative. While they have fought to stop the odd fastfood chain from daring to sell burghers to their kiddies, they have seen, in recent years, Nuriootpa become an industrial centre, huge quarries and factories booming along the Stockwell escarpment, and vast, ugly malignancies of McMansions creeping across vital vineyard country from one village to the next. It looks, sounds and feels like the most industrial sections of the Rhone: the only things missing are the nuclear reactors. The stakeholders seem pleased to co-operate with the government to stop this.

But the Barossa is Liberal country: Ivan Venning, the Liberal Member for Schubert, will be re-elected automatically; the votes never change. It’s a different story in Bignell’s home patch at McLaren Vale, where the seaside ghettos inexorably push its vines further and further away from the very Gulf whose water moderates the air and makes its wines special. Bignell is a Labor man, and one who managed through very hard work to increase his narrow margin at the last election and hold his seat. Venning’s seat is secure; Mawson, the seat held by Bignell, is precarious.

As far as housing and industry goes, McLaren Vale is in much worse condition than the Barossa. Over half the vineyard region has already been lost to houses. All the best old geology, the spread from the Onkaparinga Gorge north to O’Halloran Hill and the Eden-Burnside escarpment, has gone.

Apart, of course, from this rare spot at Seaford Heights. That, and the tiny bit remaining of John Reynell’s old estate at the ghetto that now bears his name, and the 206 ha of Glenthorne Farm, the old CSIRO research station that was given to the University of Adelaide a decade back for agricultural, vinicultural, and horticultural research which it has never attempted to conduct. University would give anything to trash the deed it signed and subdivide this land.

The citizens who narrowly re-elected Bignell (below, helping with pruning) to his southern seat are gradually digesting his discussion paper, now blessed by Rau and the Barossa, called Protecting The Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale. What they are confronted with is a complete re-drawing of their region’s boundary. Government’s draft proposal now extends McLaren Vale north and east, across the Mount Bold Water Catchment and the hilly bushfire country to the freeway at Stirling and Crafers.

An idiot may see this as particularly generous gift. But most of that country cannot be used for vineyard or farming: it’s covered with protected native vegetation, it’s too hilly, and everywhere housing can be built, like outside the national parks and catchment areas, is already pretty much covered with, well, housing.

On the other hand, Glenthorne Farm and the remains of Chateau Reynella are NOT in the proposed McLaren Vale region.

When Minister Rau was in the south, pronouncing his big plan to concrete over the priceless ancient geology of Seaford Heights, he seemed unaware that the McLaren Vale region has a boundary, a Geographic Indicator, which took years of research and planning, and countless thousands of man hours, but is now recognized in international law. This includes all the land once covered by McLaren Vale vineyards, right up to, and including the unplanted spread at Glenthorne Farm.

When I confronted the Minister about the lack of community consultation promised by the law in the matter of the Seaford Heights horror, he curtly stated that the opportunity to consult was now upon us: we would have to consult government over the proposed boundaries of the region, and anybody who cares enough would have five weeks to do it: submissions close on 22 July.

It was helpful members of Bignell’s electorate who suggested a plan to him, advising him to go to the Napa Valley in California, where the protective legislation is secure, popular, and ongoing. They suggested he should work together with the Barossa, and bring the two major vignobles under the one plan. He has diligently and determinedly taken this advice, and that of key Barossa folks, and has acted upon it.

Now Bignell has put in the effort and thrown these ideas to the legal draughtsmen in the legislation halls, produced a fairly flimsy discussion paper, and given us five weeks to tell government what we as citizens want. This advice will be minced and reformed by the bureaucracy and the caucus and its developer mates, and late in December at three or four o’clock in the morning, at the end of a record parliamentary sitting, a bill which will change forever the nature and the boundaries of Australia’s two most important vignobles will be squeezed into law, and be there forever.

The seat of Schubert, in the Barossa, will remain securely in Liberal hands. And unless they learn to listen to their dissatisfied electors, to Nick Xenophon, to the Guerilla Gardeners, and to angry, burgeoning movements like GroundswellSA, Labor and Bignell will lose Mawson.

IRONSTONE LOVELIES FROM HAHNDORF VID

Latest Hahndorf premiums: Shaw & Smith Chardonnay and Hahndorf Hills Blaufrakisch discussed ... click on ironstone gravel to view

UMAMI - OH MUMMY - MSG IN WINE & FOOD

THE FIRST UMAMI WE TASTE IS IN BREAST MILK, WHICH MAY BEGIN TO EXPLAIN A PART OF HUMANITY'S OBSESSION WITH FEMALE BREASTS

Monosodium Glutamate & Co ... Tastes That Make Us Feel Comfy ... The Great Misunderstood MSG
by PHILIP WHITE

In the cold sceptical eyes of science, winewriters commit some terrible sins with the descriptors we use. English has very few specific words for aromas or flavours, so it must all be allegorical or metaphorical: we say “smells like apricot” or “reminds me of charcuterie meats”. Some of us even attempt to describe the mood or feeling a wine might instill or trigger, as if to satisfy Leonard Cohen’s plea that we should always write about the quality of the high each bottle produces.

I found myself earlier this week blithely using the term DMS to insinuate the aroma of a particular wine, and whacked on the brakes when I realized that I am far from a biochemist and few of my readers would know what I meant. Back to the handbook.

To many scientifically-trained winemakers, dimethyl sulphide indicates a bad winemaking fault, and for a while it was the catch-cry of wine judges attempting to assert their skills by the simple recognition of this compound in wine, which they would then punish with low scores.

DMS is the major smell of the ocean, arising from the breakdown of phytoplanktons and other life forms. Many mistake it for ozone. In high concentrations, it can be quite repulsive, but when gentle and breezy, it provides a bracing, uplifting feeling. It arises, not only from the ocean, but from the boiling of many foods, from asparagus through the beets to sweet corn, and also, surprise surprise, from the poaching of fish and seaweed.

And, amongst a myriad other confounding compounds, it can occur quite naturally in the fermentation of grapes. The wine I referred to, the Portuguese Casa Santos Lima Quinta das Setencostas Alenquer 2009 white blend, may or may not have particularly high amounts of DMS, but it certainly evoked to me the smell of a seaside café on the Atlantic coast; “the sea; the seaweed; the table; the sardines; the bread; the oil”. In other words, the smell of the wine triggered anticipation of seafood. All rather pleasant.

Other compounds which occur naturally in some wines are the glutamates, including the much misunderstood monosodium variety. In the ’seventies, when Australians discovered that Chinese restaurants used MSG to enhance the flavours of their food, there was a fashionable revolt against the practice, and many theories developed about how too much MSG could have a deleterious influence on one’s well-being.

But very few of these complainants understood that the hearty organic tomato they had just harvested from their garden was chockers with natural MSG, or that the charcuterie meats they’d just devoured in their antipasto was also quite naturally enhanced by it.

The Japanese, led by the great scientist Professor Kikunae Ikeda, knew of a flavour enhancer he named umami in 1908, an onomatopaeic word that sounds all the world like the first hungry utterings of a suckling babe. Turns out mother’s milk is naturally laced with the stuff, and it’s largely dependent upon the presence of glutamates.

UMAMI COUNTERACTS ASTRINGENCY

The glutamates are essential triggers for feelings of satisfaction and well-being; to my confused research, they seem to work a little like WD-40 in the brain, and help it believe the flavours being appreciated in certain foods are better than they probably really are. Because western medicine could not locate receptors for this bio-electronic tonic on the tongue, they were very slow to accept that umami was a fifth legitimate flavour appreciated in the mouth, along with the old quartet of sweet, sour, salt and bitter. It was as if we couldn’t possibly have a conduit to transport glutamates in food directly to the brain because it would simply fuse.

Eventually Nirupa Chaudhari and others at the world-leading University of Miami, Florida discovered a complex mechanism on the tongue that appeared to receive MSG, and simply let the brain know that it was present, so forget your old school biology map of the tongue with its neatly-segmented receptors for sweet, sour, salt and bitter – it’s nowhere near that simple.

Wines that are left in contact with spent yeast, like barrels that are lees-stirred or champagnes aged in bottle develop MSG, along with other glutamates. I suspected this may be the case through my discovery in the ’eighties of premium aged soy sauce and other Japanese and Chinese delights, all of which were rich with natural MSG.

Eventually Richard Goffroy, the chef de cave at Dom Perignon, organized a life-changing lunch at Tetsuya’s restaurant in Sydney, at which Tets presented a series of exquisite dishes to accompany a suite of ancient Dom vintages that Richard generously supplied. Each of these was based on fermented vinegars and sauces that were rich with natural MSG. Eventually, I could keep quiet no longer and suggested to my host that the marriage of his exquisite wines with these delectables was “all dependent on the glutamates”, at which Richard nearly dropped his fork. Nobody, it seemed, was allowed to twig.

That was over a decade back. Since then we have learned a great deal more, thanks to the works of the astonishing Florida team, and Timothy Hanni MW and his team at the California Polytechnic State University.

Hanni’s postulations are very exciting and challenging. He goes as far as to query how winemakers can manipulate these things, beginning in the vineyard, and suggests deep study must be made into very basic things like the vine variety and clone selected, the rootstock, vigor and canopy, total vine management in relationship to soil and climate, and methods of fertilisation.

These are precisely the types of intense study the University of Adelaide could be conducting at its Glenthorne Farm research station.

Bacchus knows, if they could grow a vine that would counteract the filtering device Chaudhari seems to have discovered on the tongue, and let a serious blast of natural MSG directly through into the synapses, we might invent a wine that not only makes nearly everything taste better, including the wine, but would blow Leonard Cohen into a fit of thrash that would make the Ramones wither.

THE RAMONES

REVIEW - DANDYLION SHIRAZ RIESLING MIX

Dandylion Wines Lion's Tooth of McLaren Vale Shiraz Riesling 2008 click image for review

MIDDLETON MILL TO MEDITERRANEAN SEA

Queen Rose Makes A Run For It Rings Rosé Out Of Old Provence And Straight Back Down The Mill
by PHILIP WHITE

In 2008, Rose Kentish (above) went down the front of the very big tent and had the McLaren Vale Bushing crown placed on her head. Her partner, Sam Harrison, was not there. Instead, she had that unsung veteran of McLaren Vale winemaking, Brian Light, on her arm.

As far as industries go, the wine business is capable of decorating its major moments with a damn big frisson. And this was one of them. But this ripple had little to do with Rose taking the wrong bloke out the front.

She explained quite deftly that Sam was off surfing at Cactus or somewhere. That was understood. He’s a painter who loves to surf, not a winemaker.

She thanked Brian for being such a good winemaking mentor and advisor, and nobody blinked: although he’s hardly famous, he’s been Bushing King more times than anybody else.

The only unusual aspect of Queen Rose having this unexpected King was that winning winemakers too rarely properly acknowledge their true secret consultant, main man, or mentor. So that was cool.

No, on this occasion the frisson centered on the fact that Rose and Sam had only just sold the Ulithorne Vineyard whose fruit was in the winning wine. The whisper was concerned with whether Rose had done a dumb thing selling, as it were, the family jewels, in exchange for one fleeting crown or two. But she stepped blithely over these matters: her and Sam had spent ten years extending and rejuvenating that vineyard, and now she wanted to concentrate on other things.

One of the last great McLaren Vale vineyards in the very old (650 million plus) Umberatana siltstones north of the Onkaparinga Gorge, Ulithorne has stories of its own. To begin, it was planted by Sam’s father, Dr. Frank Harrison in 1971, to absorb the effluent from a pig farm he’d planned. But government refused planning permission for the pig farm, leaving the Harrisons with a lucky vineyard they didn’t really want, but in unique geology that made its fruit highly sought after from the start.

The previous owner, Frank Fox, called the land Ulithorne, after a bloke somebody reckoned was the first Roman Catholic priest in Australia. When Rose and Sam checked this, having eventually bought the vineyard from Sam’s parents in 1997, they discovered it should have been Ulla Thorne, but let the misspelling stick. It seemed cute, and anyway, Wirra Wirra, Rosemount – any number of the larger local winesmiths would happily take its exemplary grapes.

While hardly your egomaniac rock star wine hero, Brian Light was an obvious choice for winemaker. He’d been one of the first true Adelaide Hills winemakers in the late seventies, making wine at his father Lloyd Light’s Coolawin Winery at the top of the ridge above Ulithorne and Clarendon. He knew the flavours these ancient Neoproterozoic rocks had to offer, and had a long history of capturing these precious rarities in bottle. He is an uncommonly sensitive winesmith, and seems to become more so as he gradually accepts the deterioration of his sight.

MIDDLETON MILL. THE COCKLE TRAIN LINE WAS THE FIRST RAILWAY IN AUSTRALIA. ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL (BELOW RIGHT) THE GREAT BRITISH ENGINEER, WAS CONSULTANT TO ITS DESIGN

After a decade struggling to extend and improve the vineyard while her painting/surfing husband tried also to paint and surf while helping her in the matter of raising their four children, Rose and Sam sold the property to the burgeoning Warren Randall, of Tinlins Wines. He’d bought the old Light Family’s Coolawin from the husk of Norman’s Wines; there was an obvious geo-logic in him also owning the closest major vineyard.

So there we were in the big tent in 2008, cheering Queen Rose and King Brian as they took the region’s biggest gong for making a wine from a vineyard no longer secure in a winery owned by somebody else again.

In another spectacularly crazy move, Rose and Sam spent their Ulithorne money buying one of the biggest bluestone ruins in South Australia: the flour mill on the coast at Middleton, strategically placed on the Cockle Train railway between the river port of Goolwa, where the wheat was unloaded, and the seaport of Victor Harbor, where the ships collected the flour for transport to Adelaide and elsewhere.

While this infamous party house had been famously under permanent restoration since the last paddle steamer unloaded its last load of wheatbags, it was hardly a winery. Sure, you could have weddings there, use bits of it as a restaurant, maybe a shop or two; there was ample room for a studio for Sam to paint in, a back veranda to stack the surfboards, and plenty of upstairs rooms in which to hide four toddlers, but as far as wine goes, a cellar sales space was about all it had to offer.

Not to mention the little matter of a lifetime of patient maintenance, keeping the grand old building secure and liveable.

So Sam and Rose and their four little kids went to live in the south of France for nine months.

Now the south of France has had enough of Australian winemakers. They are infamous for cleaning the mould from ancient cellars, chipping the priceless tartrate crystals from the inside of ancient vats, and are ridiculed behind their backs for their habits of washing everything in caustic soda and wasting enormous amounts of water. While they introduced this hyper-sanitary school of Adelaide University wine science to a place where the recipes hadn’t changed since the Roman Occupation, they always came as rather arrogant teachers rather than patient students eager to learn the lure and lore of the very Old World. They came, they scrubbed, they left. Every year.

Not Rose Kentish. She placed advertisements in the local papers, seeking winemaking work. The difference was she offered to pay them: she sought a respected winemaker who would teach her the ancient tricks while she made Ulithorne wine to export back to Australia.

Which she has done. She returned to The Mill on the beach at Encounter Bay with a container full of French provincial furniture to sell at her cellar sales, and two very handsome wines the like of which not even Brian Light could make in McLaren Vale, regardless of how friggin old the mudstone is.

The first, the Ulithorne Cursus Vermentinu 2010, she made with Jerome Girard, at Vino Vecchio Estate in the Vin de Pays L’ile de Beauté on the French Mediterranean isle of Corsica. This wine should see Rose remove the words “fruit-driven wine” from the Ulithorne website, as it is nothing at all like the jammy fruitbombs Australians expect when they see or hear “fruit-driven”. Rather than smelling like citrus or peaches or apples or whatever fruits Australian whites are supposed to smell like, this wine’s fruit, its terroir and its yeast sees it smelling more like vegetables. It smells like radish, parsnip and potato peels. Oooh yes, there is indeed the acrid green whiff of the Chinese gooseberry, and the stone below the vineyard has blessed it with a prickly, dusty layer, like burlap, like a potato sack, dammit. This is wine unlike anything McLaren Vale has produced in my time, at least.

Before I lose track now and suggest that if there was one exception it would be the Tintookie fully-worked wild yeast Chenin Blanc Brian Light makes for Dowie Doole, let me move right on to the brilliantly crunchy Ulithorne Epoch Côtes de Provence Rosé 2010 our Queen made with Remy Devictor at Domaine de la Sanglier Estate on the Bormjes les Mimosas in Provence.

This Cinsault/Grenache/Mourvedre blend is as dry as a chip, yet has a lovely unctuous slime about it, so it comforts while it teases. It reeks disarmingly of Turkish delight, nougat and maraschino cherries, and then it jumps straight into your face with that comforting viscosity, turns on all the gustatory lights, and eventually leaves you with an appetizing, chalky tannin and then an overwhelming urge to grab another faceful fast. Which is what Provence Rosé is surely all about, non?

Both these wines had me weeping for those semi-cool white bean and pork belly demi-cassoulets they serve along the western Mediterranean coast, but Rose’s Rosé also deserves a full-bore king-hell bouillabaisse on the wharf at Marseilles, on one of those days when the hot smell of Africa competes with the waft of lavender coming from the perfumed slopes behind you, and the acrid reek of a nearby Gauloise somehow manages to add another beauty to the bright smell of the sea.

Or you could simply drive ten minutes along the coast, and have something equally splendiferous at Café Bombora, on Encounter Bay at Goolwa. It's much cleaner.

SHORT OF MARSEILLES, YOU CAN ALWAYS BUY A COLD BOTTLE FROM ROSE, AND DRIVE TEN MINUTES UP THE BEACH, PAY SOME CORKAGE, AND DRINK IT WITH SOME OF THE VERY BEST SEAFOOD IN AUSTRALIA AT CAFÉ BOMBORA. THE CHEF IS JOEL COUSINS (BELOW).

FOOTNOTE: To taste and purchase these wines, check the Ulithorne website for visiting hours at the Middleton Mill. Rose continues also to make exemplary Fleurieu and McLaren Vale wines from purchased fruit, including that from the original pig-effluent vineyard which mercifully ended up without any pig effluent at all. While both French wines have a recommended retail of $34, they’re cheaper at the Mill if you buy by the dozen.

CHEONG: RECOLLECTION & ANTICIPATION

CHEONG LIEW: COOKING AT YANGARRA

Hot Cool Weekend Coming Right Up Cheong Liew At Yangarra Pizza & Jay Hoad At Settlement
by PHILIP WHITE

SETTLEMENT WINES: SHARING PIZZAS BEFORE VINTAGE

Cheong Liew called by the other day, to finalise the arrangements for his lunch at Yangarra Estate on next Sunday, the 12th. We sat and drank wine together, while he made his typically vague culinary suggestions to the disbelieving vineyard manager, Michael Lane.

Amongst other tantalizations, Cheong will be cooking some of the sheep which spent last winter mowing the vineyards on this priceless distant satellite of the Californian wine family, Kendall-Jackson. He airily suggested some kind of saltire-shaped frame thing that had something to do with a Japanese beach barbecue and one of the ways sheep are cooked in Argentina, and suggested Michael could build a few of them.

SHEEP WEEDING THE YANGARRA HIGH SANDS VINEYARD photo STACEY POTHOVEN - CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Michael, a plant physiologist and very clever vine doctor, tentatively spreads his skills as far as a little animal husbandry now and then in matters of turning weeds into little grains of fertiliser, via cloven-hooved beasties, but looked flustered at the thought of becoming an outdoors kitchen architect and fitter for a grand picnic luncheon for several hundred.

ACE VITICULTURER MICHAEL LANE PLAYING A LITTLE LAMB GUITAR SOLO

I think he imagined Cheong wanted a sort of ornate stainless steel vineyard trellis thingo that you could spreadeagle dressed sheep upon and light a fire beneath. “Like mandolin duck,” Cheong said of the shape of the China duck which is opened for roasting flat, on a frame. “We’ll have mandolin sheep!” Which didn’t help Michael. So I suggested it’d be more like big guitar sheep.

Looking slightly amused at Michael’s dilemma, Julie Zuikelis, Cheong’s sister-in-law and occasional shotgun rider in matters culinary was there, too. Since the days of Neddy’s, she has seen this remarkable man walk through dozens of kitchens, leaving many a puzzled jaw agape as he scatters wild ideas and damn fool gustatory notions around like gods cast new constellations with a wave.

SOME OF ANNIKA BERLINGIERI'S FIRST SETTLEMENT CROP VINTAGE 2011

We have been around for a long time now. There is much that doesn’t need to be said when we sit. But my brain spun in wonder at unspoken recollections of Adelaide restaurants at which this great man served me food, from The Iliad (Greek), through Indian Kitchen (curry), Lord Kitchener’s (roast beef and steak), Neddy’s (everything), The Exeter (with Zuikelis - pub food from possum pie to Malay-style salad of kangaroo fillets), The Regency Park School of Food and Catering (everything), The Grange in the Adelaide Hilton (an ethereal/hearty essence of all the above), and now The Botanical, which is in bloody Melbourne.

I recall sauntering with him around Chinatown in Kuala Lumpur, checking out his childhood home, and the restaurants he grew up in - family-owned and formidable rivals – before his family scattered around the world to escape the barbaric Islamic bloodbath of 1969. I thought of the day when I walked around the corner from my place to Neddy’s one evening in the late seventies and he couldn’t wait to tell me that he’d decided to remove all the various national cuisine sections from his menu.

“I’m gonna mix it all up”, he said, and went on to invent fusion food right before our eyes.

Those of us with open heads knew we were in for a trip, and yet sat in constant disbelief at the audacity of what Cheong would cheerily put on a plate. I took Max Schubert, the Grange creator to Neddy’s because he’d never eaten kangaroo. For unjustified, squeamish health reasons, it was illegal to serve kangaroo in a restaurant, but Cheong served it raw. When Max asked when we’d be eating the roo, I had to advise it was the raw meat we’d first eaten. Kangaroo sashimi. The old WWII soldier’s incredible acceptance of new ideas showed in his radiant, boy-like wonder. “Roo? Raw? Like the Japs have it?”

Deer penis soup, pig’s feet, sea slug, duck’s tongues, shark lips, swine offal: Cheong was fearless. Outside of a disbelieving claque of dribbling converts, the awards and acknowledgements were slow, particularly from the bitter and pretentious foodists of the Australian east coast, but eventually our mate was "one of the ten hottest chefs alive" in Food & Wine Magazine in the USA, thence into the Hall of Fame in the World Food Media Awards. The Medal of the Order of Australia in 1999 was “for service to the food and restaurant industry through involvement in developing and influencing the style of contemporary Australian cuisine,” and when Adelaide Lord Mayor Michael Harbinson presented him with the keys to the City of Adelaide as he left to kick new life into The Botanical in Melbourne, Harbo said everybody was asking why he was giving Cheong the keys to the city right upon his departure. His riposte? “He's gotta be able to get back in!”

Cheong was more amused to hear that the previous recipient of said keys was non other than Rupert Murdoch, many, many years earlier.

Anyway, on the 12th June, a Sunday, Cheong will be at Yangarra, offering a Sea & Vines Festival picnic lunch. It is his first big meal cooked in South Australia since an undeserving Melbourne snapped him up. My point being that you’d be really silly if you didn’t book. Which you can do by clicking on Cheong above.

And yes, I have a vested interest to declare. I live at Yangarra, where I rent a small flat. Nothing wrong with a landlord who’ll bring Cheong in to cook lunch.

There goes your Sunday. For Pentecost, or Monday, Moon Day, or whatever you want to call it, I’ll recommend pizza, cooked by she who admits to thinking about tomatoes at least eighty per cent of the time, St Annika. She runs a lovely produce garden and wood-fired pizza oven at Settlement Wines, and has Jay Hoad playing an orchestra of instruments from the Weissenborn lap steel through dulcimer to didjeridoo.

Jay’s just back from his most recent tour of the Caribbean and the USA, on which he was support artist for The Wailers; one secret highlight of the Settlement wine arsenal is a collection of exquisite aged fortifieds just ideal for pondering wild soulful music. Click on Jay's poster to book.

Both wineries have room for a few more. Settlement: 08 8323 7344; Yangarra 08 8383 7459

THE YEARLINGS AT YANGARRA LAST YEAR. CLICK EM TO VIEW ON THE AMAZING TRACK THEY PUT DOWN VERY RECENTLY AT THE ALREADY LEGENDARY CANDELO CHURCH SESSION WITH HEATH CULLEN, DAVID ROSS McDONALD, JEFF LANG, AND B J BARKER ... BELOW: TOMATOES AT SETTLEMENT WILL TAKE YOU SOMEWHERE ELSE AGAIN. TRUCKIN STRAIGHT FROM THE GARDEN TO THE FRONT LAWN, WHERE YOU EAT EM. OR CLICK ON EM TO HEAR THE SOUND OF OLIVE JAM.