A few months ago Steve at the Bribie Golf Club booked an Opera/Wine night for a Tuesday night, in fact Tuesday 27th June to be precise, I felt we wouldn’t get the numbers being early in the week, just under 100 attended the other night how wrong was I!

The evening featuring opera singer Steven Hyndman was a follow on to last year’s very successful night and began with a tart filled with baby tomato and olive ricotta served with Pizzolato Prosecco a new arrival to Australia from Italy and looked resplendent in a dimpled bottle, an excellent start to a terrific evening of great food and fine wine. The second course followed with marinated swordfish on mini Bruschette served as kebabs which was served with a Calabria Belena Pinot Grigio. The Calabria families vineyards were established in 1945 in Griffiths NSW by Domenico Calabria and his son Francesco as a way of supplying friends and family and as Bill Calabria, the son of Francesco, commented “making homemade wine was simply to survive and provide an income for his parents, something that he and his family have been eternally grateful for “ The wine was well received by everyone and is available in the Liquorland stores here on the Island. The wine has delicate aromas of nashi pear and lychee and finished pleasantly dry but fruity as is expected from the Pinot Grigio grape A highlight for me was the next course of mini Gnocchi served on a bed of melted Taleggio cheese simple but outstanding and served with a Rocca Soave another new wine from the Northern Swiss borders of Italy, the wine had a clean acidic fresh finish, a perfect wine to match the flavours of Taleggio. The tasting notes show that some words can be lost in translation and explained the wine has a pleasant bitter aftertaste.

This was followed by thinly sliced marinated Venison backstrap served with salsa verde with garlic, rosemary kipfler potatoes, another excellent tasty plate of simple food matched with a Bindi Chianti from Tuscany, a family vineyard that has been involved with winemaking for over 700 years. The wine was excellent although club manager Steve found removing the corks of 36 bottles of wine a lot different to the simple screw top Australians have become used to! The wine was rated 93 points by Wine Spectator and was smooth with aromas of cherries, a typical Chianti wine made from the famous Sangiovese grape. The main course of tender slow cooked Manzo Osso Bucco cooked in red wine, mixed vegetables, tomato paste was served on a bed of polenta mash. The wine for this course was the Moretti Barolo 2016 vintage and my highlight, a wine from just north of Genoa, made from the famous Nebbiolo grape, and considered by many to be the greatest red wine making grape from Italy. Although not heavy in colour the aroma was intense of cherries and raspberries, the 2016 is considered to be a great vintage and served with the Osso Bucco was perfect. The wine was sourced from Dan Murphy’s.

The deconstructed desert of Tiramisu was a triumph from chef Brian and a great finish to the evening and quite frankly to match it with a wine was the only cause for concern as it had flavours of coffee, mascarpone and chocolate, how on earth do you match this with a wine? The answer, and this was purely good luck, was the Calabria Belena Dolcetto Syrah a red wine that is very light with aromas of cherry, redcurrant with a hint of raisons and hit the nail on the head, this wine can also be served chilled and can also be found in the Liquorland stores. An outstanding evening from all the comments I received wandering around the tables and a credit to the golf club and a special thanks to Steven Hyndman for the entertainment, unfortunately he couldn’t perform his usual repertoire and had to adjust his song selection however he put his best foot forward and his rendition of ‘We Are Australian’ was outstanding, no doubt the evening will now become a regular favourite for the golf club.

If you are considering venturing into Italian wines look for the paper label found on the neck of the bottle it will show the words DOC or DOCG. DOC wines come from the region best known for producing very good wines made from the grapes shown on the bottle whilst DOCG wines are wines that the Italian Government has approved to be the best from the regions shown on the label. France has a similar code of showing outstanding wines which is shown as AC or Appellation Control which again is a government code of outstanding wine, perhaps we could take note?

Cheers
Philip Arlidge
[email protected]

Today’s article concentrates on Treasury Wine Estates, their brands and what’s in the future as Australian wines once again find their way back into the Chinese market after suffering three years of punitive tariffs brought about after questions were asked with regards to the source of Covid. Treasury is the pinnacle of wine production in Australia as several of the wine labels are iconic but in reality their market share certainly doesn’t show the strength they could have with the brands they have purchased over the last forty years. The company began with Penfolds, a winery that was officially established in 1844 when the winery was expanded to produce table wines instead of just fortified wines and they started producing Claret and Riesling.

Fast forward to 1976 when the Penfold Family was sold to Tooth and Co a brewer based in New South Wales, then in 1982 ownership passed to The Adelaide Steamship Company and the Penfolds Brand was merged with Kaiser Stuhl, the term merged gives a warm fuzzy feeling of comradeship and cooperation in the growing of two of the mega companies in the Australian wine industry, however in reality the Penfolds staff really let the Kaiser Stuhl people know this was a takeover not a merger, I know because I worked for Kaiser Stuhl at the time!. In actual fact the two brands actually complimented each other with the premium Penfolds red wines, Minchinbury Champagne (as it was called those days), fortified wines such as Club Port being supported by the Kaiser Stuhl sparkling Summer Wine, four litre casks, flagons and fluffy table wines such as Black Forest Moselle and Gold Medal Rose which were very popular wines.

Soon Wynns Wines were added to the stable along with Seaview, Killawarra and Tollana and once again no sales were affected as it was manageable, the Seaview Champagne was considered a step up from Minchinbury and Killawarra a step up again and the Seaview range of table wines offered outstanding value, overall I reckon the company now had in excess of 40% of the Australian wine market but this was about to change with more takeovers which started to make the customers uncomfortable with dealing with one company who seemed determined to force any competition into the ground.

Seppelt Wines, Lindemans/Leo Buring Wolf Blass Wines were taken over and the company was acquired in 1990 by SA Brewing and subsequently the company divided their business into three separate entities, the brewing assets retained the S.A. Brewing name, the wine assets were named Southcorp Wines and the ‘white goods’ and other manufacturing interests became Southcorp an Australian conglomerate with Rothbury Estate and Rosemount were added, the company should now have control well in excess of 60% of the Australian wine market but was probably closer to 40% and Dean de Bortoli when asked whether the merges affected his business claimed after each takeover his business grew by at least 5%!

In 2005 Southcorp Wines became a part of The Fosters Group and 2011 when it was obvious the match of combining beer and wine wasn’t the marriage that was expected and so in 2011 Fosters demerged the wine operation and it became Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) is headquartered in Melbourne and listed on the stock exchange.

In 2013 Penfolds was awarded “New World Winery of the year” by the American wine industry publication Wine Enthusiast Magazine, in 2016 the Most Admired Wine Brand by Drinks International. In 2017 Penfolds Grange was classified as a First Growth in Liv-ev’s recreation of the Bordeaux 1855 classification and the only Australian winery to receive a perfect 100 points for the Grange 2008 from both The Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate, also Grange 1955 vintage was named one of the top 12 wines of the 20th century by The Wine Spectator what could possible go wrong.?

Treasury Estate Wines certainly suffered badly when the Chinese introduced 250% tariffs on Australian wines but this may be about to change as the Chinese consider removing them, it was reported several years ago Treasury were considering making Penfolds a stand-alone brand because of the profitability of the brand and rumours are circulating that there is about to be a very large product cull at the lower end of their priced products and concentrate on the higher more profitable wines which would improve the bottom line but probably lead to large layoffs and certainly improve the stock market price.

Along the way many of the wines and wineries that ‘merged’ with the company have vanished, Kaiser Stuhl, Tollana, Seaview (apart from the Sparkling wine) most of Seppelts labels, Leo Buring, most of Lindemans brands, and Rosemount is a shell of its former self and Rothbury Estate of Len Evans fame became a restaurant own label wine. After last month’s article on Prosecco it was revealed the Italians are very much trying to close down the Australian version of the product, quite timely don’t you think.