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Sitting still
Well, almost. I'm just twitching in front of the
computer, writing after a solid month of travelling for
Issue 3. The regions for the next issue are now fixed at the
Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia, Queensland's Gold
Coast Hinterland and NSW's Blue Mountains. Returning, there
was a pile of newspaper Food and Wine supplements that Jan
had extracted from the bundles that drop on the lawn each
morning and I confess to skimming and not reading all of
them. Since then, back into a morning coffee routine I have
been more diligent. And this website needed some updating.
 I've
added a link on the story we did
here online about winemaker Alex McKay. In October his
Marked Tree Shiraz won
NSW 2007 Wine of the year and when I called around
two weeks later to see if I could get a few bottles to take
with me to South Australia as 'calling card' gifts, it was
all gone. The Reserve Shiraz is still available and Alex now
has his Liquor licence and you can order via his
website.
Sign up for his newsletter so you can grab next year's
vintage in plenty of time. Make more Alex.
In other wine news, I kicked myself that I didn't stay long
enough at Chapel Hill winery in McLaren Vale to meet their
winemaker Michael Fragos. I was running from interview to
interview and hadn't made an appointment so he was busy as I
called past. We have to mention his award from the
prestigious International Wine and Spirit Competition held
in London last week, as Winemaker of the year.
Very cool.
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 The
SMH article online shows Michael with a Tatachilla
bottle ( he left there after 14 years to go to Chapel Hill
in 2004) so I figure we should have a Chapel Hill image to
even things up. This is the cellar door at Chapel Hill and
you'll see it is set in the 19th century stone church from
which the winery takes its name.
We've a story about the
Chapel Hill Gourmet Retreat and Pip Forrester, a
Fleurieu Food legend who runs it, in the next issue. They're
big regional food supporters.
The last, also wine, item that came up was a story on the
extraordinary growth in popularity of Moscato wines. Now
these always seemed to me to be a cheap fizz (Asti Spumante
was one incarnation) but after being offered automatically a
chilled glass of prosecco at meals in Italian restaurants in
Umbria when we visited, the style has attracted me again. We
also received a bottle of
Grant Burge Moscato in the post. Still wary, but being
the only choice that was cold in the fridge one night, we
opened it. It's very good, quite dry, but with strong fruit
and the required frizzante bubble. The lower alcohol was
welcome on a warm night and two of us drank it easily. It
wasn't on Jenni Port's list in
The Age 'Good Living' article but it's definitely
recommended.
FH 14 Nov 2007
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