THE GREAT VEGEMITE BOOTLEG HOAX

Black goo and bad white spirit:

the Prime Minister's having

ridiculous Vegemite fantasies 
by PHILIP WHITE

We're happy little Vegemites

As bright as bright can be.

We all enjoy our Vegemite

For breakfast, lunch, and tea.

Our mummies say we're growing stronger
Every single week,

Because we love our Vegemite

We all adore our Vegemite

It puts a rose in every cheek. 

Given the fascinating relationship between this country's government and what was once called the truth, Australians should not be startled to learn of the great Vegemite Bootleg Uprising of 2015.

It's bigger than the Rum Rebellion. And it involves ... drum roll ... race.

Our Prime Minister this week added his credence to the rumour that black Australians have been making alcohol from Vegemite.

The thought of original Australians devilishly conjuring your actual ethanol from the salty black paste Cyril Callister was hired to invent by Fred Walker in Melbourne in 1922 would have been good if it were possible.

Vegemite's made from the effluent and crud that comes out the side of big Melbourne breweries. It traditionally went into the creeks and rivers.

It's an environmental triumph.

In the outrage that followed the first rumours of dry black outback communities making bathtub bootleg from Vegemite, not one politician, advisor or hack bothered to find out whether indeed such alchemy was possible.

Guess what? It's not.

A bloke in the actual position of Prime Minister of Australia could have made a call, just perhaps, to enquire after the factual essence of the theory before he bellyflopped in.

Vegemite is made from dead brewer's yeast. Not dead brewers, but their spent yeast. They preserve it with salt, which kills all that dead yeast even deader. It contains bugger-all sugar.

You need live viable yeast and sugar to make booze. And you don't want salt.

Somebody ate the billionth jar in 2008.

Given the Australian yearning for intoxication, you could be forgiven for wondering why nobody worked out how to make booze from Vegemite before we went and spread a billion friggin jars of it on our toast.

I've always regarded that black brekky spread as a sort of revenge on John Barleycorn, who worked with Bacchus and Pan to give me the morning-after numbskull which the natural Thiamine (vitamin B12) in Vegemite helps to erase.

It's made from its cause, but in brilliant Zen counterpoint, helps heal the result.

Thiamin is essential for the survival of even the amateur ethanologist.

It's perpetual motion, the fantasy that makes booze from the barley and from its waste make more booze which is rich with its antidote, the very vitamin which helps the liver process some of this poison.

But the liver wears out.

Nuts! This all became a national hissy, but not one polly or hack bothered to research the bullshit. Only the diligent bloggers Beer Is My Friend and A Common Year put the facts on the bar.

Somehow, it seems, somebody told the Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion that Vegemite was being bastardised by renegade blacks on his very own patch, the Northern Territory. Or on Palm Island, which is a bit further away.

"Addiction of any type is a concern but communities, especially where alcohol is banned, must work to ensure home brewing of this type does not occur," Scullion preached. "Businesses in these communities also have a responsibility to report any purchase that may raise their own suspicions."

As if Vegemite was the biggest threat to the Territory.

Tricky. But our Prime Minister sailed with his bow doors open.

"This is a deregulatory Government and the last thing I want to do is to have a Vegemite watch ... because Vegemite, quite properly, is for most people a reasonably nutritious spread on your morning toast or on your sandwiches," he announced.

"What's important is that we ensure that remote communities, all communities, are being properly policed."

Policed, see.

No mention of them sensibly using Vegemite to ease whatever hangover they may have incurred. No thought that these dignified folks might be spreading the black goo on their brekky bread like big city whites.

The legendary Vegemizza: Satanika Berlingieri's wood-oven Vegemite and Northern Territory buffalo mozzarella pizza from the old Settlement Wines days

Just a thought: I haven't heard one politician ever complain about the abysmal quality of daily bread in the Northern Territory. 

Remembering some of the bread I've been sold there, I suggest in most cases you need to purge it over flame and then add the perfect Vegemite prophylactic to render it edible. It's blotting paper that falls to bits on your teeth. They call it Vienna White. I should sue for protection of the family name and give the Mayor of Vienna a call.

As for the orginal Australians? I dunno - I can't speak for those great cultures. I reckon better off heading bush to chew some pituri. At least that stems hunger, and puts meaning into vast horizons.

It was a white man in every sense, my uncle Robert White, who taught me how to use Vegemite in alcoholic drinks. He drank methylated spirits for twenty years. To swallow this shit, the methylated spirits novice needs to hide the poisonous methyl ingredient of metho, which is put into the pure spirit to make it even more terrible to drink. A metho addict until his death, Uncle Robert showed me that you catch fire if you attempt to melt the Vegemite into methylated spirits by warming them.

It's as mad as smoking crack and setting fire to your ether. Kaboom!

Instead, Unca Bob would pour boiling water over a huge dob of Vegemite in a mug, dissolve it by stirring, and then pour that black syrup into the gap he'd created in his metho bottle by slugging the first few fingers neat to make the space.

The vitamin-rich black doesn't easily amalgamate into the deadly white spirit, but it seemed all he needed was a coating of the former to ease the latter into his tattered gizzards. After the first few shots, the Vegemite was no longer necessary. His organoleptic sensories were anaesthetised by the spirit. His oesophagus muscles couldn't even vomit.

That is, of course decrepit and horrid. Unca Bob was not a smooth unit. He died of it. But he never died of Vegemite.

When I was a youth, and the ever-vigilant Jock Silverblade ran the Drug Squad, there were various panics about my lot finding stoned pleasure in things which couldn't easily be banned. There was the theory that some of us were getting off smoking banana skins. Duh. Somebody started a rumour that we were all tripping on nutmeg. Duh. There was the even more nuts fantasy that some were smoking cane toads. And then came the triumphant king hit: the sickest of my lot were injecting Vegemite in place of heroin. Gee whizz.

Little did they know. With our Vegemite sandwiches, we were eating magic mushrooms we picked on the Heathfield High School oval during morning recess.

Look at us now: a rose of bemusement in the cheeks of every little Vegemite, since we're sage and grey, and Jock Silverblade's up in heaven.

As for the Prime Minister ...

A VISIT FROM TONY AND TIGER BILSON

Check this. In the coldest windiest day of winter my beloved friend of forty years rocked up with his half sister, whom I've know for only twenty. They pulled me outa the whisky murk quicksmart. That's Tony and Tiger Bilson on the veranda of Casa Blanca this arvo ... they transported me to a very cool and warm lunch at Salopian. Perfect.  I coulda slept there.

The white coats are about to remove about half of Tony's organs (let's face it: some of us already watched what happened to them in the name of commitment to the cause and scientific research), (snap), but he's flat out anyway, determined to put the best restaurant in the world into China, which he loves and understands more than most Ocker boofheads. He is more respected there. Something has gone wrong with Australia.

This is one of the great photographs of Bilson at the peak of Berowra Waters:

It was taken by Paul Lloyd the day our hire Merc drove down the hill all by itself, straight through the roller door of the posh Pennant Hills house Bilson and Gay rented to get some respite from that endless gastronomic explosion, Berowra Waters Inn. That day, I put my new antique pocket watch through the Bilson washing machine. It was never the same. This was, I think, before the night a hire BMW woke up in the El Alamein fountain in King's Cross. German cars were tricky in those days. I reckon there were more gravity lenses then. 

I took this one below at Kangarilla when Bilson had Kinselas pumping and needed a wee break in the deep south. I call it it my Charles Bronson Bilson. Must be about '83. Note the sticky tape holding the specs together. Biffo. Walther P38.

All this shiny gastroporn bullshit and the iron chef and whatever aside, Bilson and Cheong Liew are the most influential chefs Australia has seen. We have much to thank them for. In those Kinsela days I met another life-changer, Tetsuya. After a night on the armagnac with Shiva Naipal at the mezzanine bar, I ducked down to the Kinselas kitchen for a blast of nitrous oxide from the whipped cream machine, like just to ease the head, interrupting Tets, who  was making hamburger mince for lunch. He asked Tony if this was a usual Australian sort of behaviour; one worth learning to expect. Tets was Kinselas' king burger flipper.

That's Amanda Bilson and me eating red berries and kirsch at Tony's Fine Bouche about '90. I was well over 120 kilos then, due to my work. For the empire traditionalists, I managed for a while over 20 stone. Shit we had fun. And there's so much left to do! I can't recall who took this photograph, but I reckon it was Peter Powditch, whose perfect works adorned those walls ... and here be Tones and Tiger ... kisses everywhere. More please.

   
 

NEW QUARTET FROM O'LEARY WALKER

O'Leary Walker Watervale Riesling 2015 

$25; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points 

Having reviewed the Polish Hill River twin of this wine back in May, I've not had the pleasure to taste it again since, but recall it with sufficient joy to suggest the gap between these two wines has rarely been wider. Where that had all the gentle, comforting tropical fruits the very old rocks of Polish Valley offer in the best years, this dude, from the calcrete and terra rosa of Watervale, is pure unblemished austerity. It's all Granny smith and Nashi pear juice and crunch, with a lineal acid structure that takes no prisoners. In the very long term - like fifteen years - it'll become an elegant and winsome thing for the hardcore Riesling aficionado. Right now, it's a testy bridge too far for the serious clarified cider perve who's intending to find their way into a new level of gastronomic intelligence. But cross that bridge happily, and you're a goner: a Riesling obsessive for life. Elegant, tight, crunchy, unforgiving and bracing. The wine I mean. But watch yourself! Fresh Coffin Bay oysters please. 

The famous calcrete slope at Watervale, Clare ... source of some of Australia's longest-living Rieslings ... Philip White photo taken from O'Leary Walker tasting room, looking east

 

O'Leary Walker Clare Valley Shiraz 2013 

$25; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 88+++ points 

Dry tones of coffee and mocha from seasoned and smoked oak add spicy mood and sultry sass to the ooze of blackberry fruit and pickled kalamata juice that starts this wine. Like the above Riesling, it's an austere schlück without compromise, and without the softening McLaren Vale component that often comes in O'L-W Shiraz. So we have an example of the best Clare Shiraz showing the olivine austerity the variety displays there in good years.

After a couple of days open, I realise its similarity to tight Coonawarra Shiraz. Same structure but no olive in Coonawarra.

Right now, this wine is a cool bistro/brasserie slurper for the drinker more than the thinker. The latter mob will have their pleasure with it when it blooms over the next decade.

O'Leary Walker Clare Valley Cabernet Malbec 2013 

$25; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 91+++ points 

Traditional Australian claret in the classic sense, this blend, like both the above, is pristine, ruggedly individualistic Clare at its extreme. It is of similar style and provenance to other famous Clare models of this same blend, like the great old Leasinghams of Mick Knappstein.

Very vaguely, it goes like this: if you want soft black cherries, pickled to varying degrees, go McLaren Vale. You want red cherries with some blackberry and leather and a dollop of jam? Go Barossa. Want less of that jam and cherry, and more of the tighter, more savoury and adult kalamata pickle, go Clare.

In another sense, I feel a reassuring confirmation of wine science and clarity here, in the face of the declining wash of unstable hippy wines some bits of Australia for some reason still award a passing tolerance.

In that sense, the hippies among you might best regard this as a Penfolds style of red, made unabashedly in the best of that form, but coming from the hard old rocks of Clare, perhaps even further down that brittle style line than Penfolds are usually game to go. So, unless you're buying it for your Dad, stay away, even though this price beats Penfolds.

Everyone else? Send it down. Five years without parole. Or give it one helluva sploosh into a jug and drink it from big balloon glasses with a dribbly roast. Those with patience will be the big winners here. 

O'Leary Walker Clare Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 

$25; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94++ points 

Ew Lordy. Here's a Cabernet of the lonely classic style, as solitary and as distinctively hewn from pure stone as the glory of Venus de Milo. The sensual bit ends here.

Over that dark well of intense blacksmithed essence of Kalamata, Morello and juniper dance tantalising shards of wintergreen, lemon verbena and bergamot. There is no cushy comfort for the couch potato here. This Cabernet's provocative, not reassuring. It is bone dry claret of the highest order.

Slender, angular, certainly more Euclid than Sappho, it challenges the critic to envisage its most avid fan. The male model would be rather crisp and dull company for this hillbilly hetero. The female? A test. I could share the bottle without spilling a drop, keeping the linen sharp and crisp while we discussed the magic number e or the best algorhythms yet written in Switzerland, dead certain that there will be no lipstick on the stemware at bottle's end.

Which would serve only to bolster one's confidence in the direction of a contrasting blowsy burgundy and a certain dishevelment before choosing bed as the best location to move on to the eroticism of astrophysics as applied to the composition of your actual human.  

 
Regarding the difference between Watervale and Polish Valley: Johnny Ruciak was the last Pole to live in the Polish Valley area, south-east of Clare toward the famous slate-mining town of Mintaro.  I took this photograph of him and his dog leaning against the wall of his house in about 1985.  He had hard mud floors and no electricity, and was a beautiful peaceful and helpful person who never understood what idle meant.  Johnny kept a perfect copperplate diary of  the weather and the garden (vineyard) activities every day of his long and happy, but very hard, life.  He always enjoyed taking me in there  for a cup of tea - after lighting a fire to boil the water - while he explained the details of every change in climate and weather over seventy years, always pulling another precious volume of his fastidious writings from the seaman's trunk his grandparents had brought with them from Silesia.  He recorded forensically accurate details of everything, from the way the sky looked to the flavour of the tomatoes and the moisture in the soil, every day of his life.  I never heard him complain.  Those stones are what gives the  Polish Valley wines their special flavours.  Johnny was a real good man. 

The Watervale slope, meanwhile, is terra rosa, like Coonawarra, with patchy calcrete, which looks like a layer of limestone, instead of your actual limestone. It provides flavour structures more akin to Coonawarra in its reds. The Watervale Riesling, however, is something else. Another giant step up the gastronomy ladder. It's a brilliant freak.

MILTON HITS 64: WILL YOU STILL NEED ME

This is my favourite portrait of my dear friend Milton Wordley, whose 64th birthday was celebrated over the weekend. It's always an act of faith attempting to photograph a truly great photographer, but I have a go. This was at Fino Willunga the night we celebrated our New York book show medals for our book, A year in the life of Grange. Milt has a new blog about his mates in the wine business, which you must see here.

Here's Milton, his sister Dixie and brother Mick at T-Chow on Saturday. Dixie's holding the special Wordley Family Hat which is worn only by Wordleys on the occasion of their birthdays ... click images to clarify and enlarge

This is their Mum, Marjorie Whitrow. She rode horses in Wirth's Circus.

... and this is Dick Wordley, their father. Dick was a maverick newspaperman. His real name was Ernest George Wordley, an appelletion he hated. So he changed it. Anne Marie Wordley, Milt's daughter, took this photo

 

Here they be with Anne Marie Shin, Milt's beloved partner

My friend Chris Sykes took this one ... meanwhile, inside the restaurant

Milton's not in this one ... he was taking the picture ... in its constantly mutating forms and size, this Saturday Table has dined weekly at T-Chow since 1990 ... late in the night Milton caught me and Damiano at Enzo's ... Damiano is the best waiter in Adelaide ... love your best waiter!!!!

and here's one I caught of Milt in his back yard one morning before lunch ... Ann Marie and him live in what is officially the narrowest house in Adelaide

... but Milt likes this one mostly ... I got him getting me getting them and we both got all of em in our wicked black gizzards

 
check this too: snappers day 

PETER FRASER WINEMAKER OF THE YEAR

Lovers of Yangarra Estate, near Kangarilla in McLaren Vale, think it's very cool that James Halliday and his Wine Companion last night named Yangarra Estate general manager and winemaker, Peter Fraser (above), Australian Winemaker of the Year.

The awards were presented at a big dinner at the South Yarra Capitol Grand.

Peter thanked Barbara Banke and the  Jackson Family, Californian owners of Yangarra, for their support and long-term vision, and then singled out his close staff for their dedication.

He also thanked the late Big Bob McLean for giving him his first winemaking break at St Hallett in 1995, which is when I first met him, fresh out of wine school. "He's one to watch," Bobby sagely advised. Indeed he was. Is. I reckon we ain't seen nuthin' yet.

It's not his babay, it's Shelley's babay rippin' into him ... That's Yangarra vineyard and farm manager, Michael Lane, below ... then winemaker Shelley Torressan hard at it ... and further on cellar sales and tasting manager Genevieve Molloy, McLaren Vale Cellar Door Person of the year these last two years running. When she's not wrangling tortoises.

Peter dedicated his award to our friend Jeremy Pringle, the Wine Will Eat Itself blogger who died unexpectedly last year. Jeremy was a great supporter of Yangarra, and was one of the first wine critics to 'get it' ... that's him below with Pete in The Victory. He loved to visit. 

All photos by Philip White, who lives in Bernard's old joint on Yangarra ... that's High Sands Grenache below, planted by Bernard and his Dad in 1946 and never irrigated.

"The nation’s top winemaker is Peter Fraser, from McLaren Vale," local MP and Tourism, Food and Wine Minister Leon Bignell wrote of the award.

"Pete is a great local success story and a brilliant industry leader. His dedication to the highest quality soil preparation, grape growing and wine-making have seen him garner international respect.

"His long - term persistence with following a bio-dynamic path has made others in the Australian wine industry look at what Pete is doing. He has always been keen to work with others and collaborate where possible.

“Yangarra is owned by the US based Jackson Family and I have heard first-hand just how much they appreciate and respect Pete’s work. They see him as a key asset in their international operation,” Mr Bignell said.

“Yangarra has consistently won awards in every part of its business, from best cellar - door in the McLaren Vale region to international critical acclaim for their wines.

“Congratulations to Pete Fraser and the entire Yangarra team on this wonderful accolade and acknowledgment of your hard work and dedication.

“It speaks precisely to our government’s economic priority of producing premium food and wine from our clean environment and exporting it to the world”.

After the formalities, here's what Pete said on the night:

"I am very humbled that from this country's array of formidable winemakers I have been chosen to receive this award.

"I am sure there are many equally deserving.

"Yangarra Estate Vineyard is my home, my passion and my dream ... it's pretty easy to make good wine from a place so special.

"Yangarra is owned by the Jackson Family. I first met the late Jess Jackson and Barbara Banke in 2001 ... they backed me … and since Jess's passing Barbara continues to allow me to pursue my long-term wine making dreams without compromise. Thank you Barbara.

"This award singles me out … but it is such a team effort for the wines that we create.

"I want to especially thank Michael Lane, our vineyard manager who's here tonight. Michael has an amazing understanding of our special piece of land ... we’ve worked together for 17 years on the Estate - it's been a long journey.

"And I've worked with Shelley Torresan for ten years ... Shelley's here ... She dots all the I’s and crosses the T’s in the winery.

"They both bring all my wild ideas together!

"Most recently Charlie Seppelt has brought his unyielding passion to our team.

"There' a whole group of silent achievers in the vineyard and the winery, in cellar door and sales who are all so passionate about our common goal!

"I would also like to thank a very special mentor, my friend and neighbour, Philip White who is a constant library of knowledge and sounding board for my ideas.

"And I owe great thanks to Stuart Blackwell and Bob McLean -- may he rest in peace -- for giving me my break at St Hallett back in '95.

"Lastly thank you to Qantas Epicure, Capitol Grand South Yarra, thank you to the Hardie Grant team that put this amazing event together, and to James Halliday for your dedication to tasting and discovering new and emerging wineries and winemakers.

"We will wear this award with pride ... thankyou all!

"This one's for you, Jeremy!"

Pete with the generous sponsors and the lady with the glass snakes ... DRINKSTER would love to put names up if someone could please supply them ... and the photographer