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The 30th of August every year marks International Cabernet Day and we got seriously lucky this year, picking up 8 different vintages of Leconfield's revered Coonawarra Cabernet to have a squiz at. Matt and Phil stepped through the 2002, 2004, and 2009-2014 and saw quality and refinement improve markedly over the journey. What started as a very good looking lineup finished as absolutely outstanding.

The simple pleasure of a wine that is as suggestively succulent, bold and endearing as a warm squeeze from your first love needs to be appreciated. A moment of pause. Think. How lucky am I to live a world of vibrancies, goodness and velvetiness that is assisted by the pleasure of 14.5% alc/vol? Tuesday night is when my old man and I indulge in a couple of bottles and discuss politics, football and the outcast, less fortunate or tolerable family members. The old fella cooked up fresh pasta with spinach and garlic and a side of a massive rib-eye on the bone topped with home-made beef rissoles. After knocking back a 2012 MV Kay Brothers Shiraz, the Hesketh 2014 Negroamaro puffed out the chest and presented. A variety from the south of Italy, this wine is big, bold and beautiful. The French oak gives it an approachability without compromising the gentle acid, ripe dark cherries, deep richness with subtle dry tannins. I picked up a bit of a sarsaparilla vibe but that just warmed my cockles

Matt and Phil sat down the other day to have a quick look at some of the excellent wines on offer from Hugh Hamilton...

Le Mesnil (or Le Mesnil-sur Oger if you want the whole mouthful) is a Grand Cru Village within the famed Cote Des Blancs sub region of Champagne that we spent a bit of time in while hunting for Champers. Le Mesnil is considered to be one of the greatest of the 300 plus villages in all of Champagne and is the source of Krug’s Clos du Mesnil which sells in Australia for around $1600 a bottle. The Krug is produced from a small walled vineyard (as pictured) which was planted several hundred years ago. Wines from the region are all Blanc De Blancs, white wine made from white grapes, Chardonnay specifically. They generally offer a steeliness and intensity which is hard to find elsewhere, often with a suggestion of minerality and chalkiness. Check out the vid of a very small bottling of a secret Cuvee from one of our favourite producers in the region.

On the road in Champers Matt spent a fair whack of time at Bernard Remy. Here’s Matt having a glass with winemaker Rudy and Rudy filling a glass... even winemakers can’t pour straight! Check out the vid too as Remy and Virginie explain riddling, disgorgement and adding the secret Liqueur d’expedition. Champagne starts its life as a normal, still wine but the ageing on lees (dead yeast cells) and the final addition of liqueur, generally made from a blend of aged reserve wines and a little sugar transform it from the ordinary into something special. Wineries like Bernard Remy who start with much higher than average quality fruit start at special and work their way into magical territory.

[caption align="aligncenter" width="420"]Even winemakers have trouble pouring wine...[/caption]

After

Matt spent some time in Cramant on his recent expedition hunting for more Champers. In addition to being a beautiful place, it is also home to 100% Grand Cru vineyards. There are only 17 villages in Champagne considered Grand Cru, out of over 300 in total. Fair to say Matt found some very good stuff. Stay tuned.

Prowein is the biggest and best run wine show in the world. This year over 6000 producers were hawking their wares, including an extremely large contingency from Champagne. We visited about 40 Champagne producers and found time to check out some Spanish and Italian wines too. While not as exciting as getting your hoofs on the ground in a wine region it is a brilliant way to look at a huge amount of wine in a short space of time. It’s good exercise too. We managed to cover about 13kms a day moving from meeting to meeting. Even managed to take a virtual ‘Tour de France’.

Matt based himself in Epernay during his tour of Champagne. It’s certainly a pretty place and one of the major hubs in the region, along with Reims. As you might expect, lots of architecture from eons ago and pretty streets to boot.

Since the 1960’s the vast majority of Champagne has been produced without any use of oak. Most Champagne begins its life in stainless steel, where the juice is fermented, becoming a still wine. Stainless steel allows for easy temperature control and is much easier from a hygiene perspective than managing oak.

After the initial ferment in stainless steel, the wines undergo tirage, being mixed with an active yeast culture and sugar, which creates the ‘sparkling’ fermentation inside the bottle. After 14 months in bottle on lees (the dead yeast cells) the lovely biscuity, nutty toast characters we love begin to emerge.

That said the last 20 years has seen a slow return to the use of oak for about 100 producers, some simply ageing some of their reserve wines in oak, others maturing entire wines for a period in oak before tirage. Some use oak because it allows a gentle oxygenation of the wine, producing flavour and texture development, others looking to

What a decade the 90s was! A quick poll in the office had my colleagues recalling happy pants, grunge, MC Hammer, 90210, mobile phones, the twilight of the Hawke/Keating era, Monica Lewinsky and of course... Chardonnay. It’s important to note that Chardonnay was here well before the 90s but this was the decade it was introduced to us, the masses, in two very distinct phases – wooded and unwooded. The wooded era came to us in the early 90s when many of the larger companies were serving up Chardonnay so cloaked in oak flavour and so oily in texture that the variety itself was lost in the noise. I kept hearing descriptors like ‘coconut and vanilla’ to describe the nose and ‘sweet’ to describe the taste. This was a time where we got to learn more about the application of oak in all its forms (chips and barrels) and residual sugar added in spoonfuls. Inevitably the overcorrection came where suddenly producers were scrambling to unleash their unwooded

While the Tomich Blanc de Blanc is the perfect partner to seafood and Asian cuisines, it has enough depth and complexity to pair with richer foods as well and is a great starting point to a celebratory brunch. The day after a big pizza-making dinner with friends is the perfect time for a frittata – chances are by late morning, you’ll be looking for some kind of salty comfort food that doesn’t take a lot of energy to prepare. It’s also likely that you’ll have more than a few leftovers in the fridge which have been conveniently pre-chopped, shredded and/or grated as part of your pizza prep. That’s why the other name for this dish is the ‘fridge-tata’. Weekend brunch is also a great time to crack some bubbles. In between mouthfuls of the bitey sharpness of gorgonzola and parmigiana in the frittata, the fresh and light fruitiness of the Blanc de Blanc bubbly with its hints of melon and crisp apple, turn this meal into a real taste celebration