… the wine’s not bad either B
Sue de Groot takes a gourmet bite of Australia
KANGAROOS like grapes, apparently. They hop among the vines at sunset and indulge in a cocktail of whatever cultivars happen to be hanging at a convenient height. Shiraz, pinot noir, chardonnay … kangaroos are not fussy.
We were told this by an Australian winemaker, but we did not see any kangaroos. Perhaps because we were too busy indulging in the fruit of the vine ourselves. The closest thing to a kangaroo was Gilbert the grape hound, a Collie who lives in idyllic surrounds at Mount Mary Vineyard. Harvest season is Gilbert’s favourite time of year because he loves ripe grapes, hence his name.
Having tasted Mount Mary’s wines, I know just how Gilbert feels. Australia is famous for its wines and we managed to ingest a fair few of the finest in our rapid hop around the food-producing regions of Victoria and South Australia.
Mount Mary, where the same family has made boutique wines for three generations (and where Gilbert lives) is in the Yarra Valley near Melbourne. Not far away is Yarra Valley Dairy, where we stopped to meet some friendly goats and watch cheese being made.
Australia once had a huge dairy industry that supplied milk to the United Kingdom for mountains of forgettable processed cheese. Then, in 1974, the organisation later to become the European Union put trade bans in place and the market closed. As did many Australian dairy farms, except for those that began making their own cheese from their own cows.
Yarra Valley Dairy (yvd.com.au) is one of several farmhouse producers in this famous food-producing area. They make all sorts of interesting ash-covered and washed-rind cheeses, but their Persian feta, packed in extra-virgin olive oil with herbs, garlic, shreds of lemon and a touch of chilli, has been a game-changer. For the past 10 years this small artisanal producer has been supplying more than 15 000kg of Persian feta to Emirates Airlines every year, for use in on-board salads and many other dishes. This has enabled them to put in more sophisticated machinery and expand their operation somewhat, but when you visit it feels just like the modest, welcoming farmhouse it always has been. Stop for lunch. Eat cheese. READ is the best thing to have with cheese, preferably good bread, and behind an unassuming storefront in Melbourne we discovered some of the best bread in the world. Perhaps the gloved, booted and hair-netted experts who work there get used to the enveloping fragrance of warm yeast, crusty loaves and buttery croissants. The glorious smells put us visitors into a somnolent state of comfort. This is one branch of Brasserie Bread
(brasseriebread.com.au), headed by artisan baker Michael Klausen, who works with Australian farmers who supply sustainably produced, non-GM grain that is grown, harvested and milled specifically to make single-origin sourdough bread.
“To yield the best results is to take your time, to extract all you can out of complicated and high quality ingredients,” says Klausen. “It starts at the root, the health of the wheat plants, the crumble of the soil … good wheat makes good bread. Different flavours come from different strains. We know exactly where the grain in each loaf comes from.”
Despite the need to bake more than 3 000 units a day, everything is still done by hand. “To remove the human element would be to lose the soul of the bread,” says Klausen.
Like Yarra Valley Dairy, Brasserie Bread is an Emirates supplier, providing 10 000 slices of freshly baked sourdough bread to the airline every week. This partnership began five years ago, but the recipe, using organic flour, organic grapes (for the fermented starter) and spring water, was developed more than 21 years ago.
WHICH brings us back to grapes, and their charismatic juice. Choosing the best wines from Australia’s myriad vineyards is a bit like, well, choosing the best wines from France, or South Africa for that matter. One of the most interesting wine-growing regions, however, is the Barossa Valley outside Adelaide in South Australia.
This area is unique in that it contains almost the only vines not affected by the phylloxera blight that caused France and almost all other world growers to uproot most of their vines in the 1890s. The ones that remain, some more than 130 years old, are lovingly tended and fiercely protected — make sure your shoes are phylloxera-free.
According to the Barossa Old Vine Charter, established in 2009, vineyards in this area must be registered by age, “so that no one considers pulling this priceless treasury of viticultural heritage from the ground again”.
Ancestor vines are 125 years old or more. The charter says they “tend to be dry-grown, low-yielding vines of great flavour and intensity, and are believed to be among the oldest producing vines in the world”. At the legendary Penfolds estate
(penfolds.com), where the juice of the grape has been fermented since the early 1800s, we were treated to a vertical tasting of the estate’s flagship Grange blend. Chief winemaker Peter Gago, a legend in his own right, talked us through a series of vintages, starting in 1976. Penfolds has “proudly the world’s worst wine label”, he says. And they are never going to change it. Gago’s advice about winedrinking is refreshingly unpretentious. “Your favourite wine [his is the 1953 Grange] should not be one you want to share,” he says. “It should be the one you drink all by yourself.”
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At Seppeltsfield, a wine estate that recently won best tourist facility in Australia, there is a cathedral-like, oakscented loft containing an unbroken collection of barrels of the estate’s famous Para Tawny, starting in 1878 and added to each year.
These are just a few of the heady tastes to be experienced in Australia (restaurants we will save for another day). I can’t claim to be an expert but it was satisfying to know a bit more about the onboard wines on the flight back home. I’d say it even made up for not seeing any kangaroos.