As the weekend closed in we all received an email from the wonderful Ali asking for recommendations on which beverage might make a suitable match for a traditional European Cheese fondue. Well, that set our taste bud imagination. The responses flooded in thick and fast with opinions covering every colour of the drink rainbow. The catalyst for most people's thinking was straight forward enough - cheese fondue, is thick, rich and quite involved, so something with acid is clearly required. White wines are an obvious choice, the acidity is there and a good chilling doesn't go astray either. However, bags of lemon and lime are not necessary the flavours you might be after with a serious dairy commitment (palate dependent, of course!) A few of us weighed in on personal experiences we'd had in Europe itself - and the answer came in one word: schnapps. Many Aussies have the wrong idea of what that word actually means. To cite Cambridge online: 'a clear, strong alcoholic drink made in eastern and
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Here at winedirect.com.au we're more than chuffed to announce that we've supplied the wines for the 8th season of 'Everyday Gourmet' featuring ex-Masterchef and renowned television chef, Justine Schofield! The series is aired on Channel Ten, Australia. To stay in touch with the series, head to the Everyday Gourmet site. [caption id="attachment_2076" align="alignnone" width="625"]Read more
Everyday Gourmet with Justine Schofield[/caption]
Feijoas. Love em or hate em? We found a mature tree out back of the office this week which was dropping ripe fruit and Elspeth Mark B and I got busy harvesting them like a threshing machine and shoving them in our heads as fast as we could chew. One of us may have spent sometime afterwards with our head literally jammed into a box filled with Feijoas. While the ‘harvesters’ love em, the office score line is about 50 50 – 50 in the love column, 50 in the – ‘urgh, that tastes like medicine or deep heat’ column. Either way, there’s a ‘kinda’ wine connection in as much as feijoa flavours can be found in some white wines, especially Riesling. Flavour wise Feijoa’s are a study in unusual contrasts, from both a flavour and textural perspective – tropical aromas with guava and maybe a hint of pineapple, then with strawberry and something decidedly green … the atavistic brain senses delight mixed with caution –Read more
Read moreQuite unlike like Miles Raymond in the awesome film ‘Sideways’ … if anyone orders Merlot, I’m staying. I am very happy to drink f%^&ing Merlot!
Merlot doesn’t get much love here in Australia – variously accused of being thin and reedy (region too cold) or soft and fat (region too warm) but rarely awesome, refined, structured or fruit intense. Much of the blame for Aussie Merlot being ‘crap’ has been ascribed to our clonal selections of Merlot – the most widely planted being D3V14, sourced from UC Davis in California in the mid 60s. It can make superb wine but it needs to be planted in the right sites and requires a lot of work in the vineyard to produce quality fruit. Historically most Aussie producers simply haven’t treated Merlot with that level of care. ‘Proper’ varieties, like Pinot, Shiraz, Cabernet etc have more time and money spent on them in the vineyard and winery because they yield a better return
Read moreThis minestrone is dead easy and will make enough for you to keep revisiting over a busy week. Of course, the process is all the more enjoyable with a glass of vino in hand, but that's up to you. Ingredients: Glug of olive oil 1 brown onion, diced 2 carrots, diced 2 sticks celery, diced 2 cloves garlic, crushed 1 large rasher bacon, chopped (bacon bones can also be used) 1 tin cannellini beans, rinsed 1 bunch kale, roughly chopped 2 fresh tomatoes, diced 1 tin diced tomatoes 200mL red wine 500ml vegetable stock (if you prefer a different stock, use it - I use vegetable for less salty interference) A couple of bayleaves Salt and pepper [caption id="attachment_2064" align="alignnone" width="625"]
Tuscan Minestrone.[/caption]
Read moreI was lucky enough to head off to Prowein again this year, then to Champagne and Italy. As usual Prowein was nuts, with 6800 wineries showing off their goodies from 64 countries spread out over 71000 square meters... I racked up as much as 14ks a day scooting around to meetings. Plenty of time in Champagne too, catching up with Bernard Remy, Champagne Bouche, Le Mesnil and Roger Brun. Found a spectacular producer in Grand Cru Ambonnay too... stay tuned for more on that front. The big news out of Champagne is the deeply held fear within the region that within 20 years there will be hardly any small producers left... and that perhaps this will also bear out in the Bordeaux, what with the big companies paying up to 7 euros for a kilo of grapes, vineyards now fetching 1-2 million Euros per hectare and recent changes to succession taxes. Now is a very good time to buy small producer champagne...
Read moreWe often get asked for our favourite wineries and cellar doors to visit across SA.
Read moreWe often get asked for our favourite wineries and cellar doors to visit across SA.
The annual cycle of a winemaker is certainly a curious one. There's no denying though, that vintage is one of the most exciting times of the year. Organisation of machinery, pickers, transport, staff, barrels, storage, tanks, meals, sleep is key but nothing comes close to the final hours of checking Baumé levels and waiting for the final breath from Mother Nature signalling removal of the wonderful juicy fruit from the vines, often under the cover of darkness. There are those who irrigate and those who don't; those who spray and those who won't, old oak, new oak, French oak, American oak, timing and terroir - and for all of these exciting reasons, each glorious bottle of wine you encounter is different to the one even 100 metres down the road. Where years ago growers would leave the grapes on the vines as long as possible as to yield maximum alcohol and natural sugars from our Australian sun, winemakers are leaning towards fresher, more aromatic blends meaning grapes are liftedRead more
I’ve been a card-carrying member of the aged white cult my entire career. There’s not many of us but we’re there, lurking amongst the shadows at auctions snapping up aged rieslings and semillons well below what they’re worth or fumbling around in quit barrels at independent wine shops or bottloes attached to country pubs. What on Earth drives us? I can’t speak for my brothers and sisters in this bizarre cult except to tell my own story which thankfully started early in my career as a wine merchant in the United Kingdom. On this occasion, I was in Bordeaux for Vin Expo ’93, at the time the world’s biggest gathering of wine producers showing their wares to would be buyers. On the second night, my desperate posse descended on a restaurant at 10pm and I was sent away to the wine shop to nd something “interesting, white, not too expensive but make sure it’s the best thing since...” Yeah, okay, we’ve all had that brief before!Read more
Read moreWhen I first started working at winedirect.com.au, I thought I had a pretty broad knowledge of wine. I had bounced around working in bars and restaurants, enjoyed many great bottles with friends and family. But it took being introduced to new and amazing varietals and almost at a rate of one a week for the first half a year for me to realize just how diverse wine really is. The wine world does not begin and end with Shiraz. As with most things, when I become fascinated, I do research. I found that there are over 10,000 different varieties of grape in existence that you can make wine from. Some have been around for longer than others, some have been grafted from two different parent vines to make a hybrid. The most famous of which, is Cabernet Sauvignon, which is a blend of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc. I feel “Franc Blanc” would have been a funnier name to go with, but it wasn’t my choice. The most
