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A rosé by any other name
If you were reading the SMH Good Living (May 15), did you notice Huon
Hooke's Wine column titled Snob Factor?, It's about how Australian wine
is no longer 'flavour of the month' in Britain. The proposition was that we'd
been too successful with cheap wines like the Rosemount Diamond Label, and
Jacobs Creek and the market has grown up and our premium wines are passed over
in preference for Spanish or even Californian wine.
The prices that Huon quoted from his recent visit could be a reason, and he
mentioned a bottle of
Leeuwin Estate 2001 Art Series Chardonnay
costing £105 in a restaurant. (It costs £25.50 at
Fortnum and Mason, and around $80 here). That's good for us, but for our
export market, it is obviously causing stress. But that's not what I wanted to
write about.
The Leeuwin Estate is a great Chardonnay, but
what's the rosé reference in this blog title? Well, Huon went on to mention some
Australian wines available at
Smiths of Smithfield, a fashionable restaurant wine bar (proudly proclaiming
'raw concrete' - in the decor - not for dinner). Huon warned "make sure your
plastic is well charged first: Charles Melton's Rose of Virginia pink (retailing
for $20-ish at home) will set you back £30 ($75) a bottle."
Now, you might have thought that the Virginia in the wine
title was just a pun on the US state. We discovered it
wasn't at a great Slow Food dinner we had in the Barossa a
year or so back. The meal was cooked by Virginia, Charlie's
wife, (that's her at right) and served up by their daughters
and friends.
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 The Barossa
Slow Food weekend and the dinner at Charles and Virginia's was going to be
featured in 'the next issue' of RF, but I'll have to do something with the
images, maybe a photo-diary, as they capture a terrific event against the
background of a late night picking at the Melton vineyard.
After dashing in and out as the tractors brought in the shiraz grapes and the
light fell, Charlie told stories and explained the wine names such as Nine Popes
(a mix up in him translating Chateauneuf du Pape). When Virginia was out
of the room, he confided that it was the best thing he could have done for his
relationship to name his rosé after her. As well as
a nice pun, he said it made up for a lot of things that a winemaker's wife
suffers. It is a good rose as well, as you'd expect.
(Have a look at their website
Charles Melton
Wines. The design looks slick but as you read it, you'll find it much more
warm and chatty and will give you an insight into the man, woman and the team.)
Fred Harden
19 May 07
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