Food review by James Hill and wine review by Stephen O'Halloran

Food

Immediate Past President Paul Thorne was in the kitchen today, cooking for our monthly wine tasting.

Canapés.

Gary Patterson assisted with canapé’s first up, feta and herb filo pastry roll, served warm, flavoursome with a touch of pepper for some heat.

Then followed spanakopita, a Greek savoury spinach pie with feta.

And then blini topped with creme fraîche mixed with wasabi and lemon juice topped by a white anchovy.

Main

Beef cheeks ‘a la bourguignon’, an ideal match for our wines today.

Beef cheeks were cooked for four hours at 140 degrees fan forced, a slow cook that realises the sinews of the cheek without gelatinous overtones so as to not spoil the texture.

They sat on a butter/cream mash and were cooked with carrots, mushrooms, lardons and golden shallots. A rich pinot-based jus surrounded the mash. Well seasoned with balanced flavours.

A lot of preparation was evident in the dish today within good robust flavours and texture, and many favourable comments on the canapés and main today.

Delicious Paul, thanks.

Bread today was from Haberfield bakery ..this once was the stand-out bread in Sydney!

Cheese

Kaseswiss Selected Swiss Gruyere

Category: Hard Cheese

Origin: Switzerland

Milk Type: Cow’s Milk

The methods used to make this cooked cheese are strictly controlled by the Swiss authorities. Once made only from alpine milk high in the mountain pastures in the summer, but now made throughout the year. The production of cheese in the region can be traced back to 1115. It continues nowadays according to a well-tried recipe in the village cheese dairies of its native land – the district of La Gruyère in the Canton of Fribourg (Switzerland) – but also in the cantons of Vaud, Neuchâtel, and Jura, as well as in a few municipalities of Bern. The brown natural pebbled rind encases a dense smooth interior with the occasional small pea-sized hole formed by propionic bacteria and small horizontal fissures known as ‘lenures’. It has a slightly condensed sweet, nutty flavour that lingers on the palate.

Making sure we had our daily quota of greens Paul made a warm salad of Brussels sprouts, beans, lettuce roasted almonds and sesame seeds sautéed in butter.

Wine

Today was a truly excellent gathering of wonderful food and matching wine. One of those occasions when you forcibly recognise the value of your membership of our Society. Where would you get a better meal and wine for $95?? Outstanding all round.

We started off with a delightful William Fevre Chablis 2018. 13%. Enjoyed by all as a solid, if not great Chablis, very drinkable. Nice even! That was followed by a 2018 Aligote from Colin Morey. A very good aperitif wine, crisp and fruit driven, with tons of flavour. Went very well with the pass-arounds, which were excellent. So far so good, things were looking promising if this standard was kept up. The lunch wines were about to follow up in style, on the good groundwork of the aperitifs.

The main course from our Chef Du Jour Paul Thorne was a superb beef cheek dish with perfectly creamy mash. Well done Paul. Our Winemaster then treated us to a selection of Beaujolais initially, followed by some serious Pinot.

The first wine was Corcelette Gamay Cru 2021. 13%. The wine virtually leapt out of the glass with an explosion of fruit flavours. What a happy jolly wine it was. Warm and giving, not to be mulled over, but glugged down in some noisy French seafood café with a bowl of mussels. Just the way it was intended to be drunk.

The next wine was a bit more on the serious side, a 2021 Morgon Bellevue Sable. 13% This was I thought a great food wine, blending in very well with the beef cheeks. Great colour and solid fruit carried the flavours thru. If we are going up the scale, I’m getting excited!

The next two wines caused us to jump on the Concord and jet ourselves away from France to just about as far away as you can get from France and still be on this planet! Yes, good old Tassie! Welcome to the New World of Pinot Noir If anyone was ever in doubt about the quality of top-class Tasmanian PN, this was the opportunity to dispel any uncertainty. We were blessed by two fine Wines, both from 2014. A Pooley  Butchers Hill and a Tolpuddle. Both from the Coal River region and nearly close neighbours. In a word, outstanding. My pick was the Pooley, 12.5%,  vibrant, strong pinot fruit flavours, superb length and clean lingering finish. A wonderful wine.  The Tolpuddle, a Shaw and Smith wine was just a fraction behind, but there was not much in it. 13%. Concentrated PN aromas with a delicate balance. If ever there was a vineyard in Australia created with a silver spoon, this is it.  Yalumba money, with a great winemaking team and a top location. The result has not disappointed the parents in the least. These two wines were simply outstanding. Power, yet elegance, rich flavours of cherry and raspberry, yet in harmony with acid and tannin and restrained oak. Thank you Winemaster for this treat.

The final bracket caused us to leap back onto the Concord to Burgundy again, with a 2012 St Vincent from Girardin a PN,13%, now well matured at 11yo. This was again an enjoyable wine and very good indeed but in my view overshadowed by the huge fruit of the Tasmanians. It may well have been more refined and delicate but was overpowered by the close proximity of the two previous wines. The final wine was indeed a beauty. a Gevrey Chambertin Les Seuvrees also 2012 at 13%. Say no more some might say. It goes to say, this was a superior wine, by any standard.  Deep flavours of mixed fruit and leather but hard to describe the complexity of flavours and aromas a wine such as this conjures up in a mere mouthful. You can only do your best. A bit like trying to photograph our vast outback in a single photo, it cannot be done! In terms of overall excellence, I felt this was the wine of the day. Deep flavours, yet in balance, nothing too assertive restrained, smooth, warm and welcoming but always holding a little back, inviting, alluring.  Wonderful.

In conclusion, a fabulous afternoon, thanks to all. Looking back at the last four wines, I wonder if we down here will ever be able to reproduce the classic Burgundy characteristics of say the Chambertin, but, should we stop trying? Or just get on with producing our own unique style of PN as evidenced by our Tasmanians today!