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

Food

Seventy-two members and guests were seated comfortably in our club rooms for our Chef of the Year awards evening.

Our Foodmaster Steve Sparkes and 2021 Chef of the Year Nick Reynolds were in the kitchen assisted by the kitchen brigade headed by Chef Rob Doll.

The evening started with champagne and Steve’s canapés:

• Apple, walnut and blue cheese tartlet
• Seafood terrine on a biscuit
• Prawn, crab, chilli and coriander in a wonton cup

Nick was up next with an entree Aubergine Bolognese. A thin slice of baked eggplant topped with bolognese sauce and a Parmesan wafer.

Reprising his winning dish our main tonight was homemade seafood sausage with béarnaise sauce, prawn, scallop, potato pave topped with crème fraîche and caviar with snow peas on the side.

Cheese master Mark Bradford provided a Will Studd selection Comte for our cheese course.

Steve presented a dessert of dark chocolate delice with blood orange sorbet.

The food we enjoyed was high quality, fine dining standard, masterfully executed. Thanks team.

President Bill Alexiou-Hucker was our MC and introduced our finalists detailing the meal they cooked that had them selected for this coveted award.

Our finalists were Mark Bradford, Bernard Leung, Steve Liebeskind, Merv Peacock, Steve Sparkes and Romain Stamm.

The award of Chef of the Year, voted by members, went to Bernard Leung for his dish ‘quail with couscous and romesco sauce’.

Steve Sparkes was awarded Seafood Chef of the Year for a dish of blue-eye trevalla with curry sauce topped with a squid ink tuille.

The Ross MacDonald trophy for the best accompaniment to the cheese course was won by Paul Thorne for his dish a warm salad of brussels sprouts, beans, lettuce, roasted almonds and sesame seeds, sautéed in butter to with Kashmiri Swiss Gruyère.

A great night was had by all showcasing the talent of our members.

Wine

One of our Society’s high spots for the year, held on Friday the 18 August.

A jam-packed room of 70 + saw members, wives and partners join in for this important event. There was much-excited chatter and speculation around the room about who would eventually be crowned King for 2022. Bernard Leung was declared the winner, with Steve Sparkes collecting the Silver medal. Sincere congratulations to these two, and to all of the other finalists. I am in awe of all of our Chefs, their dedication, skill and pure time-consuming hard work. I do not know how they do it.

Moving right along to our wines for the evening. we kicked off with the Society Bubbles Bernard Bremont Brut NV. An excellent as always glass of fizz to go down with our delicious pass-arounds. The next bracket was a pair of Italian reds, the Nerello Mascalese 2020, followed by the 2016 Pagliarese Chianti. The Mascalese hails from Sicily in the foothills of Mt Etna.14%. The Chianti was a Tuscan Sangiovese. 13%.

The Mascalese is a little-known grape out here, but very popular in Italy, producing a light bodied, but very flavoursome red wine, a bit like a very light Pinot in terms of colour and texture. I really liked it, an excellent food wine with a big mouth-filling strawberry fruit finish, but clean and in balance. A perfect wine to go with an antipasto sitting on the shores of Lake Garda. Garcon, another bottle please!

The second wine was to me a disappointment, perhaps expecting too much. The wine is now 7 yo, which is not old, but to me the wine was prematurely ageing, with acid and fruit falling off, heading for the description of getting flabby. Others of course may take a different view, but that is how I saw it.

We were then treated to three Chardonnays, a Chablis, a White Burgundy, and an Australian Chardonnay, the Leeuwin Estate Art Series. In sequence, the Chablis was a 1^st Cru., 2017 Etienne Boileau at 13% rated an 8/9 year for that district. An enjoyable wine from a good year. At the expense of sounding like a wine snob, which I am, there is a huge gap between a 1st Cru, and a Grand Cru in Chablis, via the generous nature of a few rich mates over the years, I have enjoyed a few Grand Crus, steely, flinty you can taste the gravel in the soil. The wine to drink with oysters. Sadly this wine today had none of those calling cards. It was an enjoyable White Burgundy from a good year, which is hardly severe criticism.

The next wine we enjoyed was another White Burgundy, but a step up the Ladder. The Colin Morey Bourgogne from 2019, at 13%, the year rated 7/10. Terrific wine, full-bodied, but crisp with great peach/ pear flavours and clean acid on the finish. A delightful wine, elegant and in perfect balance.

We now move to the great conundrum between French v Australian wines, the contest between elegance, balance and restraint in the French, and pure intense fruit flavour in the Australian wines. There is no right or wrong answer, just a case of personal choice between the two styles.

The Leeuwin 2014 Art Series Chardonnay is a great example of this conflict tonight, and were we so fortunate to compare these world class wines. My research advises that this particular Leeuwin was rated as one of their greats, an assessment I totally agree with, what a wine! Intense overtones of peach, nectarine and grapefruit, but all in perfect harmony with a crisp acid finish. One of the best Oz Chardonnays I have tasted! Many thanks to our wine masters over the years for their selection.

With the cheese we had two state of the art Cabernets, the 2012 Leeuwin Art Series, and the 2006 Bordeaux 5^th Growth Ch Du Tetre from Margaux. The Leeuwin was nearly 100% Cabernet with a small dash of Malbec, 13.5% and the French was a Cab blend, with a good proportion of Merlot, Cab Franc and Petit Verdot 13%. Year rated 7/8.

I have always regarded our great MR Cabernets as being the nearest thing we have to a top quality Bordeaux. Excellent perfumed nose. Muscular but gentle on the palate, fine tannins, wonderful fruit, cedar and toffee long finish. That I the way I see our Champion.

We now, however, are in the heavyweight division of great Cabernets, one from MR and one from Bordeaux, going toe to toe. The Du Tetre was from one of the oldest Chateau in Bordeaux dating back to the 11^th century, You can imagine the Gallic sneer at being compared to a wine from a region making wine for less than 60 years! Quel horreur!

Anyway, despite the trash talk in the ring, we were in a fair dinkum contest between the Old World and the New World. I can hear Dvorak’s New World Symphony in my head as we put both of these wines under the searing heat of a one-on-one competition, with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. In my view, the Bordeaux triumphed! That unmistakable mid-palate of a great Bordeaux was so evident, so alluring. Hard to describe, but you know it when you taste it. The wine of the evening in my assessment, followed by the Leeuwin Chardonnay.

To jolly us along with the final course, a superb blood orange sorbet + chocolate delice from Steve Sparkes, we enjoyed a wonderful Sauterne, Ch Myrat 2^nd Growth from 2007 13.5%, rated 8/9 year. A blend of mainly Semillon and some Sav Blanc. Another very old Chateau, with many owners over the years. A previous owner had in fact pulled out all of the vines in 1975, and just in time to maintain classification the new owner replanted the vineyard in the late 1980s, which is what we are drinking tonight. As always with quality Sauterne, that viscous, luscious sweet taste powers thru, a marriage made in Heaven with the Dessert.

My sincere thanks to all who brought this evening together. These events do not happen by accident! A memorable evening.