The Bribie Islander

The year is racing along we’ve had the first cyclone in 50 years, DJT and his tariffs and our first wine dinner of the year at the Bribie Island Golf Club where chef Brian once again excelled in the kitchen and the wines proved to be a mixture of the unknown to wines that would grace the tables of the finest restaurants.

How wine sales will be affected under Trumps tariffs remains to be seen if as expected a 25% tariff is added to the price of wine to protect American wine growers, the first one to be hit is likely Yellow Tail which attracts a huge following in the States with sales in the millions of cases a year, and Penfolds who are hoping to conquer the premium wine market with their super South Australian premium range, however they also have interests in California which may offset any pain, but after the China debacle the last thing Australian grape growers need is another obstacle put in their way, there is so much wine in tanks and barrels around the country at the moment it is causing extreme stress amongst many wine producers.

This situation reminds me of the mid 1980’s when Australia had a huge wine lake and premium wine was being tipped into the huge 4 litre cask market making them outstanding value at that time. As a solution the South Australian Government decided to pay $5 per vine to pull them up and convert the land to livestock farming or produce farming, this led to the pulling out of vines that produced premium wines and had been planted over 100 years before.

Unfortunately governments have little success when it comes to forward planning and when Australian wine became the flavour of the moment in the early 1990’s when British wine drinkers suddenly found Jacobs Creek we ran out of red wine as the vines and grapes were no longer there.

To solve the problem wine was imported from overseas wine growing regions such as Chile to fill the cask market which at that time was huge in Australia, also wine varieties that were being used for the production of fortified wine such as Grenache was suddenly in vogue, in fact a wine I was selling in Western Australia called Burtons Vineyard Grenache produced by Richard Hamilton wines in McLaren Vale was selected as the number 1 wine available in Western Australia by Ray Jordan the wine writer of the West Australian Newspaper and all of a sudden interest in this variety took off, strange really because many of these vines had been around for many years and it took a shortage to establish the variety as a serious premium red wine!

Returning to the wine dinner I chose the following wines from Dan Murphy’s in North Lakes for the following reasons and the general response from the diners was excellent.

The wine on arrival was a Prosecco from the Prosecco region of Italy called Belvino, I knew nothing about this wine except the outstanding packaging, the bottle was fabulous but once opened did not let me down, the quality was excellent and a great start to the night, if you are looking for an impressive sparkling wine the Belvino comes in a Rose as well as a normal clear Prosecco.

The next wine has been around for donkey’s years, 1926 to be exact and I’m surprised more white wine drinkers don’t try it. The Purbrick Family purchased a rundown winery in the Goulburn Valley as an investment, but as happens the desire to make wine soon took over and in 1925 Chateau Tahbilk was created and one of the first plantings was the rare white wine variety Marsanne from the Rhone region of France, which has been so successful Tahbilk now has the world’s largest plantings.

Many at the dinner were surprised by the quality and style, in fact one of the diners was off to buy some soon after, the dry wine offers something different and went very well with the deconstructed prawn cocktail and is available for around $20 A wine from Angove Family Winemakers in McLaren Vale, the Warboy’s Grenache, which is a terrific example of this style which if you haven’t tried is well worth giving it a go and again went well with a sage and mushroom stuffed tenderloin wellington.

Chef Brian created a slow cooked oxtail which just fell apart and a couple of red wines were served, a 2017 Red Knot McLaren Vale Shiraz $18 and the wine of the night a St. Hugo 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon $54. If these wines are still available from Dan Murphy’s they are both worthy of any special event.

A deconstructed Lamington was served with a Forester Estate Lifestyle Rose which showed fine strawberry aromas and finally with a Maleny cheese platter the wine chosen was the fortified favourite Club Port which never fails to impress. Cheers, Philip Arlidge.

Robert Louis Stevenson – ‘Wine is bottled poetry.’

Thomas Becon – ‘For when wine is in, the wit is out.’