Events

It was just another day at the office; fly in to Melbourne, taxi to the event, ensure all the materials for the construction of the stand had arrived, build the stand, set up the iPads…etc, etc…..12 hours later, be pretty chuffed with how the stand looks…….then freak out at how big this event is.

You know the old saying, “it’s a hard job but someone has to do it.”  Whoever said that wasn’t talking about me.  I trot that out a lot when people ask me what it is I do for a crust.  When you tell them you work in the wine industry the general response is a polite “really, that must be fun…”  However their eyes usually convey something far less polite. 

A customer once asked me to recommend a good wine for cooking. Her thick French accent instantly transported me back to the Restaurant on the Green.  The scene: being screamed at by a steadfastly grumpy French chef who I'd just really pissed off.  Let me explain…

Those who know me know there are two things I value in life above most everything else – good grub and good booze. It stands to reason then, that a seat at the Rockford Stone Wall Table is for me, what rolling around in excrement must have been like for the black pig we later ate. The Rockford Stone Wall Table, for those living under a rock, is considered by many to be the crowning jewel of culinary experience in the Barossa, nay, South Australia, nay, the whole of Australia – and rightly so, it is bloody excellent! Sure it’s a bit elitist (but don’t we all know someone with a Stone Wall membership?), it’s a bit pricey (well, it is for some – the guests’ combined income today would have been in excess of the GNP of some small nations…like Britain, so they were fine) and it’s a bit wanky (despite Robert O’Callaghan’s insistence that there be no wine-wank at the table…c’mon…this whole set up is a wank-fest)

The Great Led Zeppelin Wine Pairing is a series of “wine and music pairings” created by noted restaurateur and viticulturist Joe Bastianich and writer-musician Mike Edison, along with writer and wine expert David Lynch (not the freaky film maker).

What a year in technology. Google’s “Android” phones are challenging the trend-setting iPhone for marketshare. The iPad has easily created a whole new market segment of slate computing. And Facebook? No one remembers MySpace, yet Mark Zuckerberg’s notion now has more users than many countries have residents.