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The thirteenth annual Macedon Ranges Wine Exhibition was held in Woodend on 23 September. That's James Halliday presenting the Laurie Williams Trophy for the Best Wine of the Exhibition to Llew Knight of Knight’s Granite Hills for their 2004 Chardonnay.

The complete list of winners is here, but some of the names are probably not familiar unless you're a local. Granite Hills is an exception and their Reisling is well worth chasing up. Halliday said that the grape growing and winemaking skills of the region are headed onwards and upwards, and he noted that the Chardonnay class alone had produced five Gold Medal standard wines with a consistent and strongly expressed regional style.

The Exhibition Dinner held in Woodend was attended by 120 members of the Macedon Ranges wine community.

The next major event in the Macedon region is the Budburst Festival held on Saturday and Sunday, 18-19 November at which more than 30 regional cellar doors in the Macedon Ranges will open to the public, many offering food to complement their wines and entertainment. This will give you a chance to taste the winners and familiarise yourself with all those names.


Stephen Russell is the chef we featured in Issue 1 on King Island. Now he has a new website, produced as a labour of love by Doug Bailey and his team at Digital Mechanics. All it needs now is for Stephen to keep his Blog updated (c'mon Stephen) and you'll get a feel for his interests in food, the fabulous local produce and golf.

See and hear Stephen in our short video clip that Greg Sneddon shot last year at Stephen's restaurant The Bold Head Brasserie situated in Grassy, King Island.


Deborah Gittins has sent out an announcement that she is celebrating her website Food and Wine Trails,  77,777 or so visitor and her almost 'first birthday'. 'Trails' is an enthusiasts site, with a naive energy and some truly scary food photographs. Deborah is hoping to collect a list of Australia's Top Ten Hamburgers from visitor recommendations. She says the idea came from an Oprah show that used GQ's list of The 20 Hamburgers You Must Eat Before You Die.  Deborah also has a food stylist business and craft gallery.


This new Adelaide  Farmers Market will start trading on 1 October 2006. The new market will open every Sunday, offering members of the public the chance to buy straight from the grower. Produce on offer will include seafood from Kangaroo Island and Port Lincoln, apples from the Coonawarra, vegetables from Virginia and the Fleurieu Peninsula, plus Riverland oranges and grapes. For more information: call 08 8231 8155 or their website www.asfm.org.au

Lomb is back
The spring lamb campaign from Meat and Livestock Australia is back with the same old 'fragrance' joke' as the previous Mothers Day campaign. Just done a bit differently, and still funny when you know the punchline.

You can download the video commercial from here (right click and 'save as' it's on a slow server and 4mb) or you can probably catch it on YouTube real soon.

There's a PDF of the recipe brochure here if you don't see it in one of the "3,300 butchers and 2,600 supermarkets" taking part in the promotion across the country.

The MLA's Sam Kekovich ads we also liked and blogged about here.

A Taste of Slow – Australia 2006 was again a huge success, with the final weekend at the Abbotsford Convent last weekend (Saturday 9 & Sunday 10 September) playing host to over 16,000 food and wine lovers; three times the attendance of the same weekend last year.

The heritage listed Convent was brimming with Slow Food activity for two delicious days.

New elements of the Convent Weekend proved hugely popular with all sessions in the Honey Room booked out, Tea Tasting Workshops well attended and the Beer Garden a very popular place for mingling as punters stretched out on the grassed hill and soaked up the atmosphere.

Stephanie Alexander’s students worked for months to prepare their own Kitchen Garden ready for the weekend. They prepared fresh salads straight from their garden on both days.

The museum-like Ark of Taste room educated about some of today’s most loved foods that are fast disappearing; like smoked eels from Skipton, lentils from the drought stricken Wimmera and fresh butter from a single jersey herd. Foodies tasted this year’s nominations and voted for their favourites.

The Slow Market Place proved popular again this year, with many producers heading back to regional Victoria on Saturday to re-stock their stalls for Sunday.

Cooking demonstrations ran continuously across the weekend with chefs including Tobie Puttock (Fifteen, Melbourne) and International guest chef, Fergus Henderson (left), of the legendary St. John restaurant in London, sharing their knowledge.

Bellies were filled in the traditional Slow Food Canteen with special lunch menus prepared by chefs including Frank Camorra (MoVida, Melbourne), Jimmy Shu (Hanuman, Northern Territory), David Pugh (Restaurant Two, Queensland) and Matt McConnell (Bar Lourinha, Melbourne).

The Slow Food Convivia celebrations that took place in locations across Victoria were just as successful. The Smoke, Salt, Skin: Smallgoods & Charcuterie Festival in Albury-Wodonga hosted a massive 4,000 people on Saturday 2 September.

A further 30 Slow Food Convivia held in restaurants, wineries and farms across the state were well attended and many sold out within weeks of the program launch.

(Press Release 11 September - photos Aurore Harden)
 

We mentioned Dari & Yehiel Kaplan's Pilpel Fine Foods quality range of dips in our first issue. They say 'thanks for the mention' whenever we see them at markets which is nice, (but the best bit is they always ask us to try new flavours). There are hundreds of commercial dips around but we found their range uniformly terrific, and so apparently have the judges at the Sydney Royal 2006 Fine Food Awards. They awarded three silver and seven bronze awards for Pilpel produce!
Now if you can win a Silver medal for something as ubiquitous as hummous, you have to be doing something special. Dari boasts that it's because they use 'the best Ord River chickpeas with the best quality tahini'.  You can see the Pilpel range on their website or if you're in Melbourne for the Fine Food Show at Melbourne Exhibition Centre, 11-14 September 2006 – visit them for a taste at Stand H30. Well done Dari & Yehiel, it's got nothing to do with us and all to do with the products. We're proud of you!