Bon Vivant

Muscadet and Oysters

2010-10-15T13:31:00.000+11:00

If we whizz down to the western end of France's Loire Valley (the eastern end is where Sancerre comes from) we will find the home of Muscadet wines. Muscadet is the perfect oyster wine. It has moderate alcohol levels (by law under 12%) which encourages food matching.

Muscadet and oysters has to be one of the greatest examples of complementary matching ever. Both the wine and the oysters share a mineral edge, bright, brisk flavours and a lightness on the palate. The interplay of acid and salt in the mouth is a gentle contrasting note that helps bind the two elements of this match together perfectly.

Last weekend I lined up four different oyster types, six different Muscadets, and let rip with the combinations. I served the first dozen oysters raw, the second also raw and with lemon, the third dozen I gilled with some fennel butter, and the last dozen I topped with spinach, parsley, cheese and a butter sauce and baked them. I served the wines at around 10 degrees.

Any of these would work as an entree course, but having the different oyster and wine types was just spectacular. My favourites were the oysters with fennel, which seemed to go best with a 2006 Domaine de l’Ecu Muscadet Cuvee Classique.

Faster pasta

2010-10-04T14:08:00.003+11:00

Making one's own pasta is a winner on every count. It's easy to do, hard to make mistakes, and is an excellent way to involve the kids. Home-made pasta is so cheap that it can save a home with a few mouths quite a lot of money. And, best of all, the results are fantastically tasty.

We've just sourced a new supply of pasta-making machines - slightly heavier, about the same size as the previous model. As always, I tried it out to make sure I was happy with it, and made fresh egg pasta.

And it couldn't have been easier. Flour and eggs, and five minutes to make the pasta, thirty minutes to have a glass of red whilst the pasta rested, and then into a saucepan of boiling water. The sheer freshness of home-made egg pasta is wonderful.

Store-bought pasta is sometimes just a neutral backdrop for the sauce or filling, but this is so good I could eat it with just some olive oil drizzled through it and shaved hard cheese grated over it. And black pepper.

Homemade pasta is about the cheapest meal you can possibly have, and yet still packs a taste punch. But for me, cost aside, the best thing is just how darn good egg pasta is to eat.

http://www.cuisine.com.au/recipe/Egg-pasta provides decent instructions on how to make pasta - I leave the eggs out of the fridge for an hour beforehand though to let them assume room temperature.

There are electric pasta machines available now at 'domestic' price points, and we might look at selling one next year. Love to get feedback from anyone who already has one.

World Wine coming soon -

2010-05-31T13:14:00.000+10:00

The new fine wine venture, World Wine, is launching soon. If you like premium wines, particularly top quality imported wines, World Wine will be the website of choice for you.

World Wine will offer wine sampler packs, membership to Wine Clubs, and offers of limited-allocation wines.

The sampler packs will be the ideal way to learn more about wine. There'll be packs showcasing wines from different regions such as Margaret River, Burgundy and Spain; and examples of the differences across the same varietal - for example, the wide spectrum of Chardonnay styles.

There'll be a huge selection of wines and detailed tasting notes for every wine.

http://www.worldwine.com.au/ is at the moment a 'splash' page - an apt name for a wine website - where you can sign up to our newsletter. The newsletter will be the best wine newsletter in Australia - sign up to be one of the early readers!

Wine and grapes in oversupply?

2010-04-15T16:40:00.001+10:00

The 2010 wine vintage (harvesting of grapes) is Australia is drawing to a close. Assessments of it are coming in from industry analysts, winemakers and wine reviewers anticipating how 2010 vintage wines will turn out once vinified.

From an economic and industry performance perspective, the total tonnage of grapes is likely to be down significantly on last year's (bumper) harvest. Depending on your point of view this is bad news (some grape growers are receiving offers for their grapes well below their costs of production) or good news (the wine industry's biggest problem – oversupply – is partially addressed by reduced harvest size).

The endemic oversupply in the industry inevitably means lower prices for grapegrowers, particularly those without long term contracts. I feel deep empathy for the literally thousands of grapegrowers in regions such as the Riverina (around Griffith) who have stoically hung on through years of weakening demand and pricing, and for many of whom this year will destroy their businesses. Many have run out of cash and have borrowed all they can. Their vineyards will either be ripped out to be replaced with another crop or – for those who cannot afford this transition – their vines will be left to die without water.

So, we are starting to see a net reduction in the hectarage of grapes in Australia. One part of me is grateful that the endemic oversupply problem will, gradually, be addressed, although with Australia's growing penchant for imported wines, another countries oversupply merely becomes our cheap wine. Another part of me is angry that we have not been able to market our wines, here or through exports, to soak up the increased supply.

The quality of this year's vintage looks overall good through to excellent. The quality of winemaking in Australia, long first-rate, is now unrivalled, and with many vineyards planted in the 90s now maturing well and producing great (although too much) fruit, expect to see fine 2010 wines. The first whites will be out later this year and the reds from early next year onward.

Consumers will continue to be the ultimate winners as downward pricing pressure remains strong on retail prices.

New suggestion for pizza dough flour

2010-04-07T13:21:00.000+10:00

If you liked the pizza dough flour that came with your at-home pizza
experience
http://www.bonvivant.com.au/food_drink_education_courses/gourmet_pizza --
great, but this particular brand is hard to find retail. A great Australian
alternative we can recommend is the Anchor flour http://tinyurl.com/y9ahkak

I have tested it quite a few times and am really happy with the results.

2010-03-23T14:15:00.000+11:00

Volumetric vs. ad valorem

The Romans, bless them, developed quite a sophisticated wine industry. I
read recently (not in the original Latin though mind you) how a Roman wine
shop arranged tastings for late in the afternoons when sweet onshore breezes
would make wine more palatable and saleable.

Latin also underpins a current debate in the wine industry and in the
broader alcohol industry about the best form of Commonwealth taxation. Wine
is, along with other alcoholic beverages, currently taxed in an ad valorem
manner (value-based tax levied as a percentage of the wholesale price). The
yet to be released Henry tax review is likely to recommend a shift to taxing
alcohol on a volumetric basis -- that is, tax is levied on the amount of
alcohol in the product. These taxes are levied on wholesale prices and
unlike GST not directly visible to the buying public.

In the probable event that Henry does recommend this, I suspect the federal
government will take up this recommendation in part, but in ways designed to
appease the various strong alcohol lobby groups, where the interests of
beer, wine, and spirits producers are all diametrically opposed, and the
interests of cheaper/cask wines are also diametrically opposed to the
interests of makers of more expensive wines.

Do send me an e-mail Laurence@laurencewade.com if you would like a more
technical exposition, but for the sake of brevity in this blog post I
suspect that the net outcome will be:

* more expensive cask wine
* less expensive premium wine
* some continuing form of assistance to small wine producers
* continuing, fiddling changes every year so

Personally I would prefer to see much lower taxation rather than a shuffling
of the arrangements, but this is highly unlikely as governments like to
think they can use tax as a form of social policy -- in this case to reduce
alcohol related problems by increasing the relative and absolute cost of
cheaper forms of alcohol.

Wine reviews

2009-11-17T13:52:00.001+11:00

I am getting fatigued with wine reviews – not doing them, of which I will never tire, but reading them. It has been too long since I read a bad wine review. That is, a reviewer tasted a poor or poor value wine, and named and shamed it.

Just about every other consumer good is reviewed, warts and all. Electrical goods, phones, cars, airlines all attract reviews, positive, neutral and negative – but wine remains in an uncritical bubble of elevated prose. Wine reviewers admit this, but defend their practice of not commenting on poor wines on the basis that with limited time and editorial space, they do a greater public service by only reviewing good to excellent wines and not waste anyone's time with reviews of bad wines. In other words, they help by advising on what to buy, and not on what not to buy.

I don't agree. For every "above average value wine" there must be – by definition – one that is below average. For every wine reviewed at 94 points out of a 100, there must be a wine that deserves just 6 out of a 100 – if a 100-point scale is to have any integrity. For every five star winery, there must be a one star winery. And so it goes on.

Of late, the positive review bias has been getting worse – most wines on a 100-point scale are clustered in a tiny range between 88 and 96 points. If that means a wine on 96 points is 8 points better than an 88-pointed wine, then can anyone really taste the difference? Natural bottle variations alone can swamp this tight clustering of points.

In addition, this problem has now developed to the point where we have a prominent wine writer, reviewing wines that he has been caught out as not having tasted.

I do agree that wine writing is difficult – using words to capture the nuances of the thousands of wines they review (or pretend to review ….) each year is a real skill. It is just that the skill should be broad-banded to encompass wines, good, bad, and ugly.

Vertical and horizontal tastings

2009-10-13T11:09:00.001+11:00

Comparing wines is often the best way to learn about wine. And the best way to do that is to compare wines that have something in common. Vertical and horizontal tastings are two structured ways to hold a wine tasting. In a vertical, the same wine from a producer is sampled across different vintages. This is particularly suited to wines that benefit from ageing.

For example, you might line up five consecutive vintages of a renowned Cabernet Sauvignon from a Coonawarra producer, or five Hunter Semillons or Clare Rieslings. You won't be able to buy these at a Dan Murphy's or Liquorland – their range is too limited. A specialist wine store though will happily help. The beauty of a vertical is that you can see how a wine has changed as it has aged.

For a horizontal, taste the same varietal from the same vintage. Ideally, the wines will be from the same region. Five Yarra Valley Chardonnays from the (very good) 2006 vintage or Heathcote Shiraz from the (excellent) 2005 vintage would be good horizontals. The horizontal (refers to the wine, not the tasters) will show how producers make the same wine in the same conditions – and what differences emerge in winemaking technique.

If you do hold a tasting with friends, email me Laurence@bonvivant.com.au and we'll email you a terrific wine tasting evaluation form you can print off and sue to help record your impressions of the wines.

Terroirism

2009-10-09T15:58:00.001+11:00

'Terroir' is a French word with no exact equivalent in English. It does nonetheless pack a lot of meaning into the one word. In wine terms, it means the sum of all the factors that go to a wine – location, soil, climate, weather, human TLC of the grapes and soil, and so on. The usefulness of the word to embrace the spectrum of science and art that goes to producing wine means that its use is becoming widespread in English. Now, I am seeing its use in foods too – cheese, olive oils, and so on.

Some of this is pure marketing. I have nothing against marketing the terroir of a product, unless the statement is just seeking fame by association, i.e. we are from the Margaret River, therefore we are good. A more astute statement of terroir is that the maker of the product has gone to a lot of trouble to select the site, choose the best clone or variety, and rigorously brought the best of practice and technology to bear to produce the best product.

A related development is as the Australian wine industry scrambles to find new markets as a higher dollar and international competitors erode its traditional ones. Part of the new push is to stress the regionality of the wine. Many of the better wines in France are defined on the label not by the grape, but by the name of the producer, with a geographic allusion. In Australia, we might think of buying a Chardonnay or a Shiraz. In France, customers will buy a Bordeaux or Burgundy.

Australia's wine industry is moving to add more regionality to the marketing appeal of its wine, on the basis that customers increasingly want to know the back-story of the wine - where, how and who made it. The 'where' has always played a role in marketing premium wine. Regions such as the Barossa, Hunter, Yarra, and Clare have defined and promoted themselves very successfully. However, particularly in international markets, much Australian wine is promoted as a fruit-forward, inexpensive, brightly labelled product of South East Australia. This higher-level geographic statement does not add any marketing value, and while it cannot be avoided where wines are blended from grapes sourced from many locations, there is a stronger emphasis, especially with premium wines, on a greater sense of association with a particular location that has a unique wine style and heritage and lineage. Terroir is an aspect of that and it is a word you will hear a lot more of in coming years.

Wines of, well, anywhere but Australia

2009-09-15T15:38:00.001+10:00

Interesting to note that the volume and value of foreign wines is increasing rapidly in Australia. One bottle in every ten is now imported. That's still a small proportion compared to many other consumer goods, but indicates a permanent shift in the habits of some Australian wine consumers.

I'm not entirely sure why this is so as Australian wines are better, and better value, than ever. Plus, their ranks now include many varietals that are notionally "foreign" such as Dolcetto and Pinot Gris.

Maybe Australians want to bring home some of the romance and allure of our overseas holidays. Or maybe Australians are just a little tired of mass-produced "fruit bomb" style wines that are increasingly jading the palates of wine drinkers in the US and the UK – hence our faltering wine exports. Or maybe importers are bringing in more interesting lower-priced wines from places such as Chile and South Africa, to supplement the more expensive Old World wines from France and Italy.

Personally, I predict a continuing rapid growth in wine imports – exchange rates permitting – which will add to the variety and choice available to consumers, whilst adding to the woes of struggling Australian wineries.

GFC finds a new meaning

2009-09-10T18:36:00.001+10:00

The French champagne industry has been badly affected by the Global Financial Crisis - so much so that there's now a Glut of French Champagne. Sales have fallen by nearly 20% in just six months. With luck, that'll translate to lower retail prices here in Australia, although the big Champagne houses are very canny long-term thinkers and they won't lightly cut their prices for fear of damaging their brands.

At the same time, in the, let's say tightly, others would say absurdly, regulated world of French wine, the amount of kilos of grapes per hectare that can be legally harvested has been cut by 40%. This is an attempt to reduce the considerable stocks of Champagne that are hurting the balance sheets of producers and maintain quality.

Bushfire impact on the wine industry in Victoria

2009-02-20T17:25:00.001+11:00

Many have asked me about the impact of the bushfires on the wine industry in Victoria. There has been some loss of life of people in the industry. Some wineries and vineyards have been destroyed or damaged by fire – notably in the Yarra Valley. In addition, there is some contamination of grapes from smoke from the fires.

Plus, the heat wave experienced in the last couple of weeks has damaged quite a few vineyards – the intense heat has shrivelled grapes.

There has been a magnificent response from within the wine industry to assist the broader community affected by the fires, and to assist directly those in the industry who have suffered property loss.

The most useful short-term response for the public is to visit the affected regions – particularly the Yarra Valley. The region is host to some of the best wineries in Australia, it is spectacularly beautiful, and – contrary to current perception – it is open for business. Alas, wineries with cellar doors in the region report that visitor numbers are drastically down – but the area is quite safe to visit and the wineries with cellar doors would love to see you!

A PET cause

2009-02-04T15:06:00.001+11:00

Just when consumers have (or have not) adjusted to screwcaps as the superior cork replacement, there's an emerging alternative to glass bottles: PET bottles. PET is the material used for soft drink bottles. The Queensland winery Sirromet has launched a range of wines packaged in these plastic PET bottles – and a good thing, too.

If wine was invented today, I doubt it would be bottled in glass. Glass bottles have benefits – they have reasonable thermal properties (i.e. bottled wine changes temperature more slowly than in a PET bottle), tinted glass reduces UV damage to wine, and they are relatively cheap. However, glass is obviously very fragile and extremely heavy (a growing issue given the global distances wine is sometimes transported).

For traditionalists wanting their wine to come in bottles – rest assured, PET bottles are not going to replace glass any time soon. A key barrier to change is that wine bottlers have big investments in glass bottling lines. But we will see more variety in wine packaging in coming years.

Pinot Gris and Pinot Grigio

2009-02-04T14:14:00.001+11:00

I'm hesitant to even write about these wines for fear of drawing more attention to them, but I guess the genie, and alas the gris and grigio, are out of the bottle. These two white pinots – gris ("gree") and grigio ("gridge – e o –") – are making inroads with wine drinkers, mostly edging out Chardonnay.

Pinot gris (gris is French for grey, grigio is Italian for, um, grey) is a derivative of the (red) pinot noir grape. There is no difference (save marketing) between the two, and it comes in various styles ranging from sweet and unctuous, through to bone-dry. The white pinots have their fervent industry supporters – aka winegrowers who have planted white pinot gris grapes, and now have to sell the resulting wines.

Their appeal though is a mystery to me. If I wanted the taste and flavour of a pinot gris, I'd buy a $5 Chardonnay, open it, leave it in the fridge for three days, and hey presto – I'd have a $15 pinot gris.

Australian wine exports collapse

2008-12-08T13:53:00.001+11:00

After two decades of solid, profitable growth, Australian wine exports are now in reverse. Sales to November were down half a billion dollars, to $2.5 billion, compared to the same period a year before. The causes are complex and not easily fixed – and the decline may have been worse if the Australian dollar had not fallen by so much. At heart, other nations, including newer producers such as Argentina and South Afric, as well as traditional rivals such as France and Spain – have simply become more competitive faster than we have. Consumers in all our key export markets now have a much wider range of wines to choose from. And, the industry has decided to go up market – produce and sell more expensive wines, building on our reputation for cheap, fun and cheerful wines. But as anyone with a smidgin of marketing nous knows, it doesn't naturally follow that consumers will accept a premium product from a supplier that they see solely as competent as an entry-level producer.

The move up-market is probably the only viable path to renewed growth. But, that's squarely the area where entrenched suppliers have long standing, robust brands. And it's the market most affected by the global economic turmoil that's surely hurting the wine buying classes as much as any. And to go up market requires deeper and different marketing skills. To cap things off, Wine Australia, the Government body charged with developing overseas wine markets, is struggling.

The successful wineries remain those that get on planes, find reliable long term distributors in each target market, butter up wine writers and buyers, and follow through with competitive pricing and reliable delivery.

The ups and downs of the wine industry

2008-11-28T18:23:00.001+11:00

The Australian wine industry is, largely out of public view, undergoing dramatic change.

At the top end of town, the giant global beer and wine conglomerate Fosters is contemplating how to move forward after its ill-fated and value-destroying acquisition of Southcorp.

Drought, especially in the irrigated 'engine room' Murray and Darling River regions of the wine industry is decimating many grape-growers.

Competition from Latin America and South Africa is eroding our huge presence in the wine sections of supermarkets and bottle shops around the globe.

And the recently published Wine Australia industry growth strategy is sensible and durable - but much harder to achieve than the previous plan.

In the next few days I'll reflect in more detail on the industry's challenges and opportunities.

2008-11-11T12:42:00.001+11:00

So, I'm fielding lots of questions about how the economic slowdown is affecting my food and wine business.

The glib answer is that in times of trouble people take solace in drink. That's actually and thankfully not true.

The deeper answer is: nothing dramatic, but lots of interesting small trends, some of which cancel each other out. Our suppliers are mostly ever more keen to be paid on time (which suits us, as we usually pay COD anyway), and are ever more keen to do deals. So that is, net, a plus for us, and for you, dear customers. Imported goods are becoming more expensive as the Australian dollar has tumbled, though we weren't complaining when the dollar was rising and imported goods were becoming less expensive.

Customers are definitely spending less on restaurants and are eating and entertaining more, at home. That's a plus for our Courses that are used as a DIY at-home social event. And Christmas? There'll be fewer companies buying hampers for their staff or clients, though consumers I think will splash out a bit after some months of being frugal.

Falling fuel prices are taking pressure off our freight suppliers, which is good, though we still lament the fact that in Australia we don't have a more competitive freight system that might allow for novel and customer-friendly things such as weekend deliveries. Now that would be something worth drinking to.

The Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy

2008-10-26T16:45:00.001+11:00

The Jimmy Watson is Australia's most prestigious wine award. It's for the wine judged to be the best dry red table wine from the vintage prior to the current vintage (i.e. last year). The judging occurs as part of of the much large Royal Melbourne Wine Show. Winemakers crave winning the Jimmy Watson – despite there being no cash reward and the trophy best described as less than attractive. The avalanche of publicity guarantees sales for the winner.

I went to a tasting this week featuring some of the entered wines for the Trophy. The wines were universally excellent – and in a first for the Trophy, the judges have moved to announcing a shortlist of wines before the actual winner is announced (next month). This is clever, as the Trophy gets so much coverage, the runners up – also superb wines – now get some publicity air time.

The Jimmy Watson Trophy process though remains mired in controversy,

The wines that are entered by winemakers are barely a year old – in most cases the wines that are submitted are samples from oak barrels, where the wines are still maturing. That means that by the time the winning wine is announced – the wine that will actually be blended, bottled and sold (and feature lots of PR about being the Trophy winner) may not be quite the same wine in composition and flavour profile as the one that was submitted for tasting. This offends the wine industry purists. I take the view that that it would be a very foolhardy winery that released a bottled Jimmy Watson Trophy winner that was different from the wine sample that was submitted and won the award.

Let them eat cake

2008-10-26T15:02:00.001+11:00

So … with economic fears rampant … how are people responding from the view of my business? The clear shift we are seeing is a move to entertaining at home. I think that's at the expense of dining out. People still want to socialises with family and friends – but cut the cost of doing so. I understand that supermarket sales of pre-prepared meals are up significantly. And hospitality friends tell me that fewer people are dining out, and of those many are spending less per head – especially on wine.

All in all, a natural response. To date relatively few people have been personally or directly affected by broader economic concerns. But many are acting as if they might be sometime soon.

Late afternoon bubbles

2008-09-09T18:10:00.001+10:00

To a 'trade' tasting of Champagnes. Hosted by a middle-league producer of Champagne, Henriot, who bravely lined their bubbles up against some big guns of Champagne including Pol Roger, Gosset, and Louis Roederer. The wines were tasted in three brackets – Non Vintage, Blanc de Blanc and Vintage. The styles ranged from sweetish to dry, from youthful to aged, and from amazing to brilliant.

For me it is still faintly disconcerting that these serious bottles cost a fortune in a bottle shop or bar, and yet are opened by the dozen with gay abandon at trade events. And … worse …. not drunk, as tasting wine doesn't involve actually drinking the stuff. Yes, that's right. Thousands of dollars of champagne goes from bottle to mouth to… spittoon.

Champagne sales are booming; so much so that the French Government recently increased the acreage in the region of Champagne from which sparkling wine can be called "Champagne".

Non-Vintage is the dominant style of Champagne. It means that each year, the winemakers try to make wine that is roughly the same in taste and flavour, irrespective of differences in the quality and flavour of the annual grape harvest. Winemakers achieve this by drawing on reserves of base wines that are made in previous years; a typical Non-Vintage might have three to six different year's worth of base wines, made from any or all of the three grape types that are used to make Champagne – Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay.

Blanc de Blanc ("White from White") Champagnes are made only from the white grape Chardonnay – the other two Pinot grapes are both red.

Vintage Champagnes are made only from the grapes harvested in a specific year. Compared to non-vintage, vintage champagnes vary much more in style and quality, as the winemakers cannot iron out grape differences by blending.

2008-09-07T21:04:00.001+10:00

Sunday lunch for friends at my place; hard for them as they think they need to bring uber-special wines to impress me. Well, darn right they do. In fact people usually over-compensate wine-wise when dining with me – they spend too much and bring too much. I'd actually prefer they brought flowers or chocolates and left the wine to me but, in these days of moderate drinking pre-driving home, I usually end up with a lot more wine by the end of the lunch than at the start.

One guest though made a mark for herself. She brought two bottles of wine which maybe cost her $6 all up. At least, that's what they would have cost twenty years ago, when she brought some 1989 Seaview Cabernet-Shiraz. The bottles were in excellent condition – the corks were intact, the ullage was fine – and the labels were covered in a mottled dust. Clearly these had been stored in an ideal deep, dark, dank cellar. I'm often asked about whether wine should be cellared and the simple answer is that unless you have a wonderful wine storage place – viz., a cellar - then don't. The wide daily temperature oscillations in most houses means that wine deteriorates quickly, so, perversely, the longer it is stored at home, the worse it will be. That said I'm a fan of and recommend dedicated wine fridges; clever devices whose internal temperature gradients allow them to maintain reds, whites and sparkling wines at optimum temperatures. And their prices have gone from being silly a few years back to being acceptable.

The '89 Cabernet-Shiraz was remarkable – light, feathery, not much aroma and little left by way of fruit flavour. Dry, but still pleasant. And, mercifully, just 12.5% alcohol – back before Australian reds headed in the 1990s for the alcohol stratosphere.

Boutique beer

2008-09-04T20:34:00.001+10:00

Micro-breweries are flourishing in Australia. The overall beer market is flat – that is, we are as a nation drinking much the same amount of beer this year as last. But within that flat market, major changes are afoot. Beer drinkers – and many who previously have not drunk beer – are switching to boutique, a.k.a. premium beers.

Boutique beers, compared to mainstream brands, are usually much more interesting, more rewarding to drink, and hold much greater flavour. Mainstream beers are made in vast, continuous industrial processes. Their taste is – I won't call them bad, indifferent, weak or poor – they are perhaps best described as bland or boring.

The major beer brands are in long-term volume decline, thanks to changing lifestyles, a shift to wine, and an awareness of more flavoursome beer alternatives. In the next few weeks I'm going to be sampling lots of boutique beers from some of the many new micro-breweries across Australia, and I'll post my tasting notes here.

And winediva too

2008-09-03T20:37:00.001+10:00

And another wine reference website I must mention – www.winediva.com.au – a brilliant, painstaking, accurate, useful resource for anyone with an interest in wine. Especially useful if you are planning a visit to a wine region.

Food and wine tourism

2008-09-03T11:37:00.001+10:00

I really admire this new website: www.visitvineyards.com – it is deep in information and well thought out.

Taste Australia

2008-09-02T17:14:00.002+10:00

Another food and wine show in Melbourne - Taste Australia - has just finished, and clearly there is no end in sight of Australian's appetite for these events. Held in the magnificent Exhibition building - (the site of Australia's first and temporary federal Parliament, pre-Canberra) - the show attracted dozens of excellent restaurants and terrific food and wine sellers. The place was packed with bon vivants - not just there for a cheap feed, as it wasn't cheap to get in or to buy food.

I amused myself by attending a sommelier bakeoff - I think the session had a more elegant name, but I can't remember - where six of Melbourne's top wine waiters mostly failed to guess/determine a series of masked wines they were asked to evaluate and identify. I got three of six right, which was better than the sommeliers, but all that proves is that one's first instinct when tasting a masked wine is usually the right one, and the longer you analyse it, the more confused you get.

And increase in wine prices too

2008-01-31T14:47:00.001+11:00

Wine prices have been mostly falling in real terms for some years; due to grape oversupply.

But this year's grape harvest (getting underway now; through to May) is WAY down on last year's - perhaps 1.2 million tonnes vs 2 million tonnes. So winemakers large and small will be raising prices wherever they can - expect increases of between 10% and 20% this year. I expect a breakout in prices for top-end brands such as Penfolds; lesser increases for smaller and less well-known brands. Still, there'll be plenty of bargains in such a competitive industry.

Increase in cheese prices

2008-01-31T14:44:00.000+11:00

Cheese prices are going up - fast. The global supply for milk and its by-products is not keeping pace with demand - so milk prices are rising, and with it dairy prices. Both Australian and imported cheeses are affected; prices have risen 15% in three months and further increases are to come.

In excess or in proportion

2008-01-31T14:38:00.000+11:00

Sad to see that the anti-alcohol brigade is gathering strength. Same message, and some of the same messengers, that brought us anti-tobacco campaigns over the decades.

Can alcohol do you harm? Well, duh, who doesn't know that drinking too much can cause short and long term damage to you. But should sales of alcohol be further regulated or - more insidiously - should drinkers be made to feel each year marginally more shamed by their enjoyment of a drink? I don't think so.

How white wine makes red wine taste more, well, red wine-like

2007-05-16T16:17:00.001+10:00

This is one of those blog posts that make me fret about the whole wine blog thing. Is this of vast appeal or an example of wine bores at their worst. Duh. I don't know. Anyway, some of you will have heard of the recent fad – nay, trend – among winemakers to add a splash of Viognier to Shiraz. Wine blends are commonplace but Viognier is a white wine. Adding it to Shiraz makes a serious difference to the taste of the resultant wine. Winemakers will typically add between 2% and 7% Viognier (for me, about 5% is ideal), and it is added when the wine is being made - the grapes are fermented together. (Let me pause here – Viognier is pronounced Vee On Yee Er).

Ok, so what's the result? In an ideal blend, Viognier will add some fabulous aromas of musk, floral notes and spices, and will often yield a silkier edge to Shiraz. Technically, it can also help stabilise the colour of Shiraz, a useful benefit long noted by the winemakers in the Cote Rotie in France, where this blend has been commonplace for centuries. In a less than ideal blend (usually where finished Shiraz and Viognier wines are blended together, not co-fermented) the result can be too light visually and a little like lolly water.

There are at least thirty wineries now producing shiraz/Viognier wines. I prefer ones from cool climates such as the Heathcote and Yarra Valley regions in Victoria, the Eden Valley in SA, and the wineries in and around the ACT.

Starkbierfest

2007-05-07T16:00:00.000+10:00

In the early 1990s, my then employer decided I would be a good person to open up Eastern Europe for them following the fall of the Iron Curtain. And that Munich would be the ideal location to work from, thanks to a fine airport.

On my first night in Munich, I headed to the local bierhall, which advertised opening night of "Starkbierfest". Alas, my level of German then being modest, I figured what "bier" and "fest" meant, but made the fatal mistake of not asking what Stark meant.

In fact Stark means strong, and as Germans take their beer seriously, and serve it in giant one litre steins, drinking a few Starkbiers is quite an experience. But the plot thickens: Stark doesn't mean strong just in the level of alcohol, although at an average of 7.5% alcohol, drinking four or five steins is similar to consuming two or three bottles of wine. In fact the deeper meaning of Starkbier is that it is strong in proteins, vitamins and minerals - between 16% and 18% of the beer consists of these dissolved elements. The Paulaner Monastery monks who first brewed Starkbier in the 17th Century did so to help them make it through the Lent, drinking it as liquid food.

Coffee prices

2007-05-07T13:19:00.000+10:00

I was dejectedly contemplating the quality of coffee in Melbourne airport recently (I guess I could strike 'Melbourne' and say 'any') and chatting to someone about the price of coffee. She asked why coffee beans in their country of origin are so cheap, but the end product (a cup of coffee) is so expensive.

There are several reasons; the key is that the actual coffee component in your $3.20 cafe latte costs perhaps just 20 cents. Other costs - staff, rent, coffee machine, milk - all take their share.

Remarkably, coffee beans are, after oil, the most valuable traded commodity in the world. The price at the plantation gate has fallen quite significantly over the last ten years, thanks to oversupply of coffee beans. But this is not reflected in the end price of coffee: Even if coffee bean prices fell by half, that would only account for a possible shift of 10 cents at the final retail point of sale. Also, The coffee beans, from plantation to cup, pass through many, many middlemen, each of which 'dampens' price changes because of their stock holdings, competitive position, hedging and so on.

Beer and cheese

2007-04-28T13:46:00.000+10:00

A light cheese with a heavy red wine. Is this what's called a balanced diet?

I must say that after some recent (like, last night) pairings of boutique beer and cheese, it is easier to get a great taste hit from a beer and cheese match than wine and cheese.

I'll write up my tasting notes and post them soon.

Olive oil and balsamic vinegar

2007-04-27T09:32:00.000+10:00

A pet dislike of mine is the 90's hangover of restaurants still serving olive oil and balsamic vinegar, along with their bread. It's not that the taste combination is unpleasant. But olive oil coats the mouth with fat, which inhibits the ability to taste future courses. Worse, balsamic vinegar competes (thanks to its high level of acid) furiously against, and usually wins, any enjoyment of delicate wines.

I much prefer, and usually have to ask for, unsalted butter to accompany bread. Or, better still, skip the bread and have a glass of champagne at the start of a meal as an aperitif. (Mmmm I guess I shouldn't assume that all my dear readers know what an aperitif is - it is a French word meaning a drink, taken at the start of a meal, to stimulate appetite and aid digestion).

The drought

2007-04-27T08:36:00.000+10:00

The ABC told me last week, as if I needed telling, that the drought is biting into rural Australia. For the life of me I can't imagine how droughts bite, not least as a drought is the absence of something, not the presence of a biting being. Anyway the news today is that rain - heavy, drenching, solid rain - is spreading across much of SE Australia. Let's hope it is the start of a much wetter than average winter.

Olive oil

2007-04-23T19:23:00.000+10:00

As I was cooking dinner tonight (Hokkien noodles with vegetables) I was counting the number of bottles of olive oil in my kitchen. Dull, huh? Maybe ... but read on.

Anyway I realised I was missing the most important olive oil of them all. I should note that I'm only talking here about Extra Virgin Olive Oils, or EVOOs as they are acronymed. (Most olive oils in supermarkets are EVOOs, and they are the only olive oil type worth buying).

Anyway my missing olive oil type is medium, which implies, as is the case, that there are also light and robust olive oils. The differences between them are quite striking, and depending on what kitchen use you are putting them to, its good to have all three types available.

Medium oil is best used in salad dressings, as it balances flavour and texture.
Light oils are best used with fish, or blended with mayo to make sauces.
Robust oils are best for cooking.

Stock and use all three, and ... well firstly, you'll be better placed than I am as I write. Alas, most olive oils don't state on the label whether they are light, medium or robust. You could in theory tell by looking at them - the more robust the flavour, the deeper gold colour it is - though many olive oils are bottled in dark glass, so that doesn't help. So buy olive oil at a good deli or providore where you can get advice.

Olive oil prices

And while I'm on olive oil, I mentioned a minute ago that most oils in supermarkets are EVOOs. In a later blog I'll discuss more about just what qualifies for Extra Virgin status. Seeing the range of EVOOs for sale though you'll be struck by the wide variation in prices - some EVOOs are selling for upwards of $30 a bottle. Why is this so? Well, the best EVOOs are superior to lesser ones, BUT not by so much to warrant paying a huge premium. High priced EVOOs are more due to the tiny production of the producer, expensive bottles, over-designed labels, and brand positioning - "I'm expensive, I must be good".

In reality, the most important consideration in buying olive oil is freshness. I suggest buying olive oil in small bottles, in dark glass (olive oil is very susceptible to sunlight), stoppering the bottle after use, and storing it in a cupboard. Olive oil goes stale quickly, so even if like me you use a lot of olive oil, buy it in smaller bottles and replace frequently.

Wine prices

2007-04-23T17:32:00.000+10:00

How the wheel turns... barely six months ago, the Australian wine industry seemed to be mired in a catastrophic situation of entrenched grape oversupply, economic prices for grapes, and faltering exports. Now, due to the drought, grapes next year are likely to be as rare as virgins in King's Cross. Well, maybe not quite that rare, but without water, many vines in Australia will curl up their toes and resist any blandishments to set fruit and produce grapes.

The majority of Australia's wine grapes (and table grapes for that matter) come from the vast, irrigated vineyards that line the banks of the Murray Darling river system. With the drought threatening to eliminate all irrigation rights for farmers, the yields from these vineyards could fall dramatically. Some older vineyards, whose root systems have tapped into deep ground water, may survive without irrigation, though plentiful watering is the norm to boost yields.

The typical vine (sp. vitis vinifera) is a pretty hardy beast, and most will survive a year or two on whatever rain happens by. But with vineyards in the Murray Darling having been taught from childhood to expect lashings of water during the Spring and Summer growing seasons, they'll essentially shut down and not produce grapes.

Wine consumers have had a fabulous five years in terms of declining real prices and increasing quality for wine. Some experts now tip that wine prices might increase by as much as 30% in the next 18 months.

I'm not so sure, though I do think now is as good a time as any to buy wine, especially more serious reds that will cellar well for a few years. And I think the four major wine companies will take this opportunity to convince the two major wine retailers (Coles and Woolworths) that a series of price rises are necessary.

What Bon Vivant is all about

2007-04-18T15:48:00.000+10:00

Have you noticed how just about every word we use to describe enjoyment of food and wine is French? Epicure, gourmet, connoisseur, gourmand, gastronome…and of course bon vivant. In the “old” world of Europe, food and beverage grew up together. Cuisine was defined by the region, and the local wines or beers were part of that philosophy. The French and Italians are passionate about their food and wine, believing that it is vital to a life well lived. The Germans and Belgians equally love their food and beer. I created Bon Vivant for one simple reason – to help you discover, create and enjoy delicious food and drink with family and friends. I believe that most people see food as pleasure. We eat it because it looks great, it tastes great, it smells even better, and when you share it with friends and family it is so much fun!

When selecting products for Bon Vivant Experiences, I seek out food and drink that reflects the personality of the producer, usually an artisanal producer using traditional methods and ingredients, the place it comes from, and the passion, without which food or drink is never great.

Bon Vivant has embraced this philosophy and wants to share it with you. It doesn’t mean I’m trying to convert you into a beret-wearing Francophile. Rather, it means showing you how to find, serve, enjoy and understand the best available food and drink.

I believe the taste sensations from great food and drinks are sublime. And I believe that a shared repast between family, friends and lovers is a civilised, socialising way to spend time together, to reflect, and to contemplate the better things in life. I invite you to join me in becoming a real-life bon vivant. In other words, a person devoted to the finer things in life, especially good food and drink.