The five of us were all looking forward to a good night out. One in the group was returning to the US after two years living in Sydney, others reflecting on completing one of the greatest banking IT projects ever run anywhere in the world, which we all touched in one way or another over the last few years, but mostly we just wanted to get together to share some companionship and some great wine. And what a wine line-up we had!
Owen, David, Mark, Daniel, Steve
We had been planning the evening for about a month, but except for agreeing on the date, no one did any real planning at all! So we decided to meet at the Small Bar in Crows Nest and take it from there. Mark and I arrived first, drinking some 2012 David Hook Pinot Grigio from the Hunter Valley. After a glass each and some nibblies, we got another full bottle as the other guys were arriving.
After some good banter, we all started showing off the wine we had brought along for the evening. It was suppose to be a ‘big red’ night and it certainly turned out that way! As I mentioned, we all apparently wanted to impress, but not in that manly competitive way of “You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine!” It was more about being respectful of each being part of a friendship and wanting to share something special with each other. The other four in the group had been especially tight over the previous few years and I had only circled in and out a few times, so it was great to be part of the group that evening. We all knew and enjoyed our wines and made sure we each brought a very good bottle along!
I brought along a 1996 Waverley Estates Semillon to start us off with an iconic Australian white wine which I thought would go with whatever Asian food we decided to eat that evening. Since the evening was about the friendship and the wine, we weren’t sure where we would eat (so we went to the closest place which was the Vietnamese restaurant Phuong immediately next door to the Small Bar!). In fairness to my friend’s taste and Phuong, some of the guys had been there before and it was an outstanding choice.
I felt we should start with one bottle of white wine and I wanted to test and share what I knew would be a great Australian white in the 1996 Waverley Estates Semillon. Once we got the food ordered (Banquet Menu B, showing again how much effort we would be putting into non-wine related topics!), we got into the red wines. The line-up was a stunner:
2008 Trinity Hill Homage Gimblett Gravels Cabernet Sauvignon / Merlot blend (from Hawkes Bay, New Zealand)
2007 McWilliams Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Shiraz
2002 Wolf Blass Black Label Shiraz / Cabernet Sauvignon / Malbec
Some bottle of Pinot Noir that Mark bought at the bottle shop because for some reason he did not think we had enough wine for five guys!
Except for the 2002 Wolf Blass Black Label which was gifted to Andrew (the guy returning to the US), the 2009 Tyrrell’s Johnno Shiraz (which we deemed too young to drink), and the bottle Pinot Noir that Mark bought, we did drink all the wine with dinner. You can tell because of how careful we were with our plates and food (and this does not show the broken glass on the floor or the mess I made of Daniel’s shirt!).
Six of the reds we drank were Shiraz or Shiraz blends – that’s heavy lifting for one meal! We opened with the Trinity Hill Cabernet Sauvignon / Merlot blend and finished with dessert and the Pinot Noir, but everything else in between was Shiraz! I believe we all agreed that the wine of the evening was the 2002 Penfolds St Henri. The 1997 Penfolds 389 was absolutely splendid and lasted better than I thought it would. The 1994 Brokenwood Hermitage was a classic older Hunter Shiraz with great body and finish, but still maintaining the elegant style of an old world Hermitage. The 2009 Tyrrell’s Johnno Shiraz would have been a delight, but we passed on it as it will last another decade or more and improve with age. And the 2003 Penfolds St Henri was another wonderful wine. Each of these reds would usually be considered the featured wine to finish a meal with, but we had no problem over-indulging with all of them!
We then walked in the rain down to Bravo’s for some gelato and other desserts where we did finish off the bottle of Pinot Noir that Mark bought before finding our individual ways home.
Great friends, great food, great times and great wine all go together. We were not trying to impress in a competitive way – just expressing gratitude for each others friendship and respect for each others palate! It was a rare evening where everything worked – at least it seemed so with that much good wine!
We had a small and very private event for my 60th birthday. For a man who has everything (and many things twice!), I certainly did not need any presents. But I have found it impossible to convince others of that, so through my lovely wife, Deanna, I was able to have her help guide people to buy some small things that I did need or at least desire! The presents were great and I will cherish and use them with enthusiasm over many years. The collection is in the picture below.
I received great generosity from great friends, but most importantly, they all gave of their time to spend a wonderful evening with us. However, above and beyond these wonderful gifts, there were three gifts that emotionally moved me and which I will treasure forever:
Gift #1
One was from Nessa Doyle, who is not a long-term or close friend (but becoming much closer to Deanna and me with each passing week!). I have worked with Nessa over the last several years and we have respected each other being able to get things done in difficult situations. I had invited her to dinner about three weeks before my birthday with some other colleagues we have worked with previously.
We were about three hours into the dinner of three weeks before my birthday and discussing the joy and learnings we get from charitable work, especially feeding the homeless. Nessa is one of the most supportive people I know of great causes and and we mutually like giving of our time and funds to support these causes. Nessa was planning to attend a wonderful dinner and fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis (CF) at the Sydney Opera House. Nessa offered to take and pay for Deanna and me to attend with her as a 60th birthday present for me. Nessa was not only being very generous to me with such a great gift, but also for one of her work mates who has a son with CF and hosting a table for the evening. Nessa made a large donation to the cause that evening by picking up three seats. Additionally, it is a gift that keeps on giving as it introduced Deanna and me to CF and the tragic impact it has on people’s lives, but also the wonderful miracles that are made possible through the funds raised. Nessa’s generosity will remain with me forever.
Nessa, Steve, Deanna – not often I am surrounded by so much beauty!
Thank you so much, Nessa Doyle for day-in, day-out being such a wonderful, generous and caring person! And for those of you who also want to support CF, you can do so by making a donation to Cystic Fibrosis in Australia, or to The Children’s Hospital at Westmead CF Department which was the fund-rasier we were at that evening. And if you can share this around to others who may be able to help, please do so.
Gift #2
Rob and Jude Tudor came up from Melbourne to share the special day with us. Rob is one of the few people I greatly enjoy sharing a good cigar with (Jim Covington being another, but he lives in New York state now). As a special treat, Bob was bringing up the last of the two very special cigars he had been gifted from his son, who is a masseuse to a very wealthy Arab sheik. The sheik gave Rob’s son (who then gave to Rob) two cigars made for Castro from the Cohiba factory in Cuba. When I do occasionally smoke and greatly enjoy a cigar, it is almost always a Cohiba. But this one was really special. It used the very best tobacco leaves from selected years and were intended to be for Castro’s special collection. These cigars cost a fortune but that is not what makes Rob’s gift so generous, it is the scarcity of being able to find or obtain these rare cigars.
Rob and I were going to share this cigar together and both enjoy it that evening. We smelled the cigar earlier in the evening and we were planning on sharing the cigar later that night with some very fine aged vintage port. Usually, we would each have our own cigar and avoid the “men exchanging spit thing.” However, this was a cigar worth savoring and sharing. I have had some very fine cigars in my life (seriously, as little as I smoke cigars, why go with a cheap one?), but I have never smelled a cigar as fine as the one Rob brought along for the evening. I looked forward to smoking that great cigar with Rob later that night, but it was not to be. After ten courses of the finest food anyone could want and 13 bottles of great wine, we had little left for enjoying a great cigar. It was at that point that Rob presented me with the cigar to have on my own when the time is right. What a friend and what a guy!
This cigar is a few millimeters longer and a little thicker than a Cohiba Robusto. And the smell is beyond awesome. A regular Cohiba (which many, if not most, consider the finest cigar you can buy) is tepid and flat compared to “Castro’s cigar.” If there is a cigar to smoke in heaven, this is the cigar! Unfortunately, after about 5 hours of eating and drinking, we were satiated. My estimate is that Castro’s cigar was a two hour smoke and after all we had to eat and drink that evening, it would have incapacitated us! Therefore, we did the smart thing and passed so we could wake up (late) once again on Sunday morning.
Castro’s Cigar
I will never smoke a better cigar in my life time. Rob has smoked one and knows the pleasure, and to give me his other one to enjoy is a gift beyond belief. I will find the right place and time to smoke this. I do not want to wait too long as I am concerned about the risk of anything happening to compromise the pristine quality of this cigar. While I have it stored in my humidor, it is always possible that it may pick up a fungus or dry out. I am watching it almost every day and ensuring it retains its pristine quality, and do not want to do anything to increase the risk of it going off. Therefore, it will be smoked soon and likely at our place in the Hunter Valley. This could be as early as next weekend, but I am going to ask Rob if it is possible for him and Jude to join us for a few days over Christmas in the Hunter Valley and if they can, then I will save it to share with him then.
Rob, thank you so much for providing me with what will certainly be the best cigar I ever smoke. I will honor you first and foremost with attempting to share it back with you, or at least pick the perfect setting and time to enjoy it over several hours without distraction!
Gift #3
Many, many years ago while still in graduate school, I started to learn about and drink some better wine. This mostly consisted of $3 – $5 bottles of Chilean reds. However, someone at Surdyk’s, one of the premier wine stores close to the University of Minnesota campus where I attended graduate school, convinced me to pick up two bottles of the 1977 Dow Port. I think I spent about $15 – $17 per bottle for it, but cannot really remember. However, I held onto it for a long, long time. When I arrived in Sydney, Australia in 2000, I gave a bottle to my (now) in-laws as a gift. My wife (just girlfriend at the time) told me that it was easiest to get along with her parents if you provided them with nice material things! So I gave them one of my two treasured bottles of the 1977 Dow Port about 14 years ago. I was hoping they would share it with me over time, but that has not happened. I am not sure what ever happened to that bottle and if they drank it or lost it in their cellar (I am at their house tomorrow so may look for it!) or gave it away. But I have never seen it since.
The second bottle of 1977 Dow Port was consumed in a state of drunkenness which I greatly regret. I lived next door to my wife’s cousins back in 2006 and they were having a BBQ. We had a lot of food and quite a bit to drink when someone suggested that some Port might be nice.. I quickly ran back to my house and got a bottle for us to drink. Instead of pulling out a bottle of some cheap tawny port, I decided to share my last bottle of the 1977 Dow Port. Well, it was gone within 20 minutes, having been consumed by 20 year olds who could not tell the difference! Yes, I had a glass and it was magnificent, but now realized of the two bottles of 1977 Dow Vintage Port that I had carried around for between 20 – 30 years, both were gone and I only had one damn small glass to make me realize how good it was and how it had gone to others who had not appreciated it.
Don’t get me wrong – I love sharing great wine and last bottles of special wine with others. However, I feel my generosity was wasted here. Giving up both bottles has been a great regret and both bottles went to my wife’s family. While I never blamed her nor blamed her family, I did feel regret in having these two great bottles being given up to others who could nor did not appreciate them.
My wife is not good at keeping secrets, especially when she wants to tell someone about something ‘good’ she has done. Therefore, it is amazing that she was able to keep this secret for over three years from me! I knew she had gotten me a bottle of wine for my birthday, but I just could not figure out what she bought me. I checked on if there was a bottle of 1952 Penfolds Grange and this was their first trial year. One half-bottle of the 1952 Penfolds Grange signed by Max Schubert could be had for $12,500 (it originally was given away as samples and then sold for $4.50!). I was pretty certain she would not spend that kind of money, nor take the risk on a 60 year old Grange. A 1952 Chateau D’Yquem would still be a great drink, but they did not make a vintage that year. I also did not figure she would risk a 60 year old Bordeaux. The only thing I could come up with is that she got me a bottle of the 1952 Sepplets Vintage Port, or some other birth-year Port. A Port would last a very long time and get better over time.
Never in a million years did I think about about her finding or replacing the two bottles of the 1977 Dow Port! What a special gift and and great surprise. This gift is like being given back life! Or like someone coming in and correcting a really stupid mistake I made (which I had). I love my wife greatly every day of the year, but never more than for the very special gift she gave me on my birthday. I was totally blown away.
These three gifts will all be consumed in due course. The fundraiser gift from Nessa was consumed a week ago, but will live forever in my memory. The gift of the cigar will be consumed and greatly enjoyed before the end of the year. And I am opening a bottle of the 1977 Dow Vintage Port this evening and will likely consume both bottles over the next year. (I also have about 15 bottles of the 2004 Dow Vintage Port and two bottles of the 2007 Dow Vintage Port – a spectacular vintage!)
While these gifts will be consumed, they will last as great memories forever, and for that I want to thank Nessa, Rob and Deanna for the impact they have made on my life by being so generous and considered in their gift giving.
[BTW, this post has taken me four hours to write, edit and take the pictures for! Wow!]
It was quite a birthday weekend overall, with guests flying in from the US and Melbourne to join those of us already based in Sydney. We started with a Friday evening pre-birthday dinner celebration at Fish at the Rocks (with our out-of-town visitors) with some great wines, including:
1992 Waverley Estate Semillon;
2007 La Belle Voisine Chassange Montrachet;
1996 Lindemans St George; and
2005 Chateau Haut Beregon Sauternes
This on its own was a great line-up! Then on Saturday, I tasted three wines while being a guest on Food in Focus with Natascha Moy. By the time I returned from the show, I had a bit of a buzz having consumed almost 750 ml by myself (one needs to make sure they are voicing the right opinions when one is serving the public like I was that day)!
By the time I arrived home, Jay Huxley, Masterchef, had arrived and was preparing dinner, and what a dinner it turned out to be. A number of our guests (including most who had attended Deanna’s 40th birthday several years ago) thought it was the finest meal they had ever had! They felt that the wine drinking for Deanna’s 40th was the best wine drinking experience they ever had and it came with a great meal, but my 60th was the reverse – the best meal they ever had with a great line-up of wine.
It was my intent to make my 60th birthday the second best wine tasting meal I ever had, but I admittedly fell short. There were two main reasons for this. The first that being my 60th birthday, it was really tough to get birth year wines (1952) that were truly outstanding compared to Deanna’s 40th which had a birth year of 1971 when we had:
1971 Lindemans Limestone Ridge;
1971 Penfolds Grange; and
1971 Chateau D’Yquem
each bottle easily being in the Top 10 bottles I have ever drank! But the most important reason was that Jay had developed such an awesome menu that it was actually difficult to match the very best wines with the food! For Deanna’s 40th birthday dinner, I presented the nine wines I wanted to drink to the chef and he did a magnificent job matching the food to the wine. But for my 60th birthday, I let Jay have total freedom and while he created a killer food line-up, it was difficult to match great wines to every course.
I had been working for a couple of months to pick a line-up of great wines for my 60th birthday, including thinking it was time to have our last bottle of the 1981 Penfolds Grange, and do that just after the 1991 Grant Burge Mesach (given to me for my 59th birthday BTW!) and the 1992 Henschke Hill of Grace. My original line-up of wines for my 60th, included:
1998 Pommeray Louis Champange
1990 Waverley Estate Semillon
2001 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling
2007 La Belle Voisine Chassagne Montrachet
2005 Chateau Brane-Cantenac
1991 Grant Burge Mesach
1992 Henschke Hill of Grace
1981 Penfolds Grange
1997 Chateau D’Yquem
1967 Lindemans Vintage Port
However, once I saw Jay’s menu, I knew I needed to back off the big reds (especially the Shiraz) and I also ‘downgraded’ some of my choices, including moving from the 1990 Waverley Estates Semillon to the 1992 Waverley Estate Semillon (which we had the night before at Fish at the Rocks), and I also decided to drink the 1980 Lindemans Vintage Port instead of the 1967. I only have two bottles of the 1990 Waverley Estate Semillon left and I needed a good bottle and a back-up bottle to share with my wife’s boss who I greatly admire and who is a Semillon fanatic, and I wanted to sip the 1967 Lindemans Vintage Port over several months instead of ‘gulping’ it down at the end of a boozy meal, which I have mistakenly done with some iconic Ports previously.
But the key thing about Jay’s menu is that it demanded more whites than reds and the reds had to be more refined than the big Shiraz’ that I had nominated for the evening. Therefore, I eliminated the:
2005 Chateau Brane-Cantenac
1991 Grant Burge Mesach
1992 Henschke Hill of Grace
1981 Penfolds Grange
I also decided upon seeing the desserts and having some guests who would never have the experience again to go with the 1975 Lindemans Porphry instead of the 1997 Chateau D’Yquem. I only ended up using two wines from my original list being the 1998 Pommeray Louise Champange and the 2008 Grosset Polish Hill.
So what was the menu and matching wines for the evening? It was as follows:
Upon arrival – Bollinger NV Champagne
Tian of Alaskan King Crab, black caviar and radish – 1998 Pommeray Louise Champagne
Sousvide Pork Fillet, red cabbage, cauliflower puree and lentil pear salad – 2008 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling and 2007 La Belle Voisine Nuits St George (Pinot Noir)
Tomato heart and gin shooter, in tomato tea and basil oil – finishing off the 1998 Pommeray Louise Champange and 2008 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling
Smoked eel, jamon croquette with beetroot and apple – Rose Vin de Pays du Vaucluse
Vichy Asparagus with citrus and olive crumb and sousvide duck egg yolk – 2009 Bouchard Perrin & Fils Puligny Montrachet
Charcoal octupus in romesco sauce and verde oil – 2007 McWilliams Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Shiraz
Confit duck in mushroom sauce, abalone and star anise consume – (we continued to drink whatever wines we had going at the time!)
Canon of saltbush lamb in minted pea soup and taro – 2000 Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon
Death by Chocolate – 1980 Lindemans Vintage Port and Bailey’s NV Rutherglen Muscat
As you can imagine, we were quite satiated by the end of the evening!
This post has become quite a bit longer than I had expected, so I will leave my review of the food and wine matching and descriptions to the next post. I just wanted to let you know that this was a very special meal – the best meal I have ever eaten thanks to Jay Huxley and his team, and among one of the best wine drinking experiences I have ever had. Not every meal is like this though. Tonight I am having a Chinese pork bun and drinking a 1997 Rosemount Show Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. But it is still great as I am sharing the evening with my loved one over good food and good wine. What could be better?
We spent Saturday the week past, traveling and visiting friends in the Blue Mountains and beyond. It was a great time and we had some great meals, even though it did make for a very long day. For once, I did not bring the wines and let it up to the hosts to provide the wine to accompany the meals.
During our Saturday lunch, we had some great food starting with three different soups samplers (tomato and carrot, pumpkin, and pea), followed by stir fired veggies and prawns, with a wonderful dessert of chocolate balls and berry ice cream. Each course had a decent wine to go with it from a white to red to sweet dessert wine. And as usual the best part of the meal and experience was sharing it with great friends.
We repeated the performance for dinner, but it was a heavier meal with more meat, including a marinated roast beef side, sausages, and stir fired veggies. Therefore, more red wines were served and the two choices of red were very nice choices. Unfortunately, the first problem was that the wines were drunk too early in their life.
The wine of the evening should have been a very nice 2007 Penfold’s St Henri. This is an excellent wine and has a 96 (out of 100) rating. Usually I would salivate over having a St Henri with dinner, but then we are currently drinking the 1999 vintage (I have about 6 bottle left and need to drink them in the next few years to get maximum enjoyment from them).
But I could tell from the first smell and the first sip of the 2007 that this wine was not ready for drinking! I asked the host how many bottles he had left and he mentioned he had six left. I told him to wait at least two more years if not up to five years before he drinks the next one.
This wine should be drunk between 2015 and 2024 for peak enjoyment and ideally in the 2019 – 2021 time frame. While he decanted and even aerated the wine, it did not have much of an effect as the wine structure was just too tight. And then, the wine was served in a white wine glass used for Riesling or Semillon. This did not allow the wine to breath and forced an already tight wine into a small area to breathe and drink from making it even tighter. There are reasons Riedel makes specific wine glasses for Shiraz and other grapes and drinking a Shiraz from a white wine glass is almost sinful!
This was a great wine, served too early and without giving it any advantage to shine. This was a $75 – $100 bottle of wine wasted. It still had (obviously) fresh fruit, but was too tight and the complexities of this great wine had not become fully integrated. I hope the host takes my advice and does not serve up another bottle for several more years. This will be a great wine over time, but certainly not at its best today when served up in a small glass.
This Saturday (10 November, 2012), at 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm, I will be joining Natascha Moy and two other guests on her very successful gourmet food and wine show Food in Focus on FM 89.7. This show has been running successfully for four and a half years with a star’s line-up of great chefs, restaurant and specialty food owners, wine makers, winery owners and others who are passionate about good food and wine.
I am privileged that Natascha has asked me to join her party this weekend and excited to participate. Without giving too much away, I will be talking about Party Wines and bringing along three good bottles which are excellent examples of what good party wine is all about. This is live radio so it will be exciting to find out what Natascha is going to ask me and the other guests. I just hope that I can contribute and continue to help her grow her following. My only goal is to help you be able ‘to impress’ the next time you bring a bottle of wine to a party or other function.
I met Natascha through social media as we share a common interest around good food and wine. We started following each other on Twitter, became friends and started to communicate and share ideas on Facebook, and now will finally have the opportunity to meet and share some good wine and good ideas and discussion together. I love witnessing (and even better, be part of!) examples where social media really works!
Natascha is a real ‘pro’ in the radio and journalism game as evidenced by her long-running success with Food in Focus. She has a background in magazine journalism with a Bachelor of Journalism degree and has participated in traditional and online media for years. She has published her own food newspaper and now continues to share her insights through her radio talk show Food in Focus on FM 89.7.
Natascha and I also share a passion around gender diversity. This year, she founded a networking movement called Girl Power which has been founded on the principle that women in business have brilliant brains but deserve something more. She runs bi-monthly networking events attended by approximately 60 women talking about everything from sales to sex, and fashion to nutrition.
Once the show is completed, I will write a blog to summarize what we discussed on Party Wines to share with you, but if you can join Natascha, me and her two other guests for Food in Focus this Saturday at 4 pm, we would welcome it. Hope you are there with us!
We had a great dinner party last evening. As usual, the most important ingredient was great people full of life, fellowship and great conversation ranging from food to work, charity work, working out, finding a partner and much, much more. But there were also some other great ingredients including having Masterchef and cook extraordinaire, Jay Huxley, cooking for us and some very nice wines to match.
But let’s start with the people. We had all worked together before, doing amazing things together and with great respect for each other. While we all had some overlap with each other, there were also a few new relationships formed last evening which is always nice to see. I love being around really nice, fun and funny people who are all so charitable. And while we told everyone not to bring anything, they brought magnificent chocolates, a bottle of Bollinger champagne, and ordered flowers (which I need to check with concierge on as we did not get any today).
Jay cooked up a magnificent meal, starting with a Alaskan king crab and prawn bisque which was to die for, followed by osso bucco for some of us and ‘fish and chips’ (Balina Mulloway with taro chips!) for others with caramelized pineapple with lychee sorbet for dessert. Simply fantastic.
And why is Jay’s food so good? Bisque from scratch, lychee sorbet from scratch, 15 kilogram Mulloway caught and cleaned by Jay himself – well, you get the point! And he is an amazing chef who connects with his audience through his food and his personality.
And the wine line-up to match was something also. We started with the 2006 Annie’s Hill Riesling upon arrival, followed by the 2008 Little’s Gewürztraminer to go with the bisque, the 2004 Thompson Estate (Margaret River) Cabernet Sauvignon and the 2005 Stags Leap (Napa Valley) Cabernet Sauvignon to go with the osso bucco, and then the 2007 De Iuliis Late Harvest Semillon to match off against dessert..
And if that was not enough, we then cracked into some 1980 Lindeman Vintage Port and had great affogados using the Rutherglen Buller Tokay. For the late stragglers who still had not had enough, we finished off the magnificent 2007 Maurice O’Shea Shiraz from the night before, and then opened yet another bottle, this time the 2006 Coldstream Hills Cabernet Savignon.
But the amazing thing is that I was so relaxed and comfortably just drinking and enjoying the fellowship, food and wine, that I really did not take the time to think about how the wine tasted in any particular detail. It was all just really great!
I do remember the 2006 Stags Leap being more complex and like a traditional Bordeaux than the 2004 Thompson Estate, which was lighter, and both being very well balanced and with big fruits. But that was from a tasting of both wines when I decanted them before the guests arrived.
Therefore, there is no detailed analysis of the wine in this post. Just a remembrance that with the right people, right food and right wines, you too can have a perfect evening even if you cannot remember much of it!
I have had three experiences lately in sharing a ‘last’ bottle of great wine with others. One was intimate and at home, only sharing with my lovely bride, the last bottle of the 1996 Wolf Blass Grey Label. We were fortunate to purchase three dozen of this magnificent wine a long time ago and very inexpensively, but it proved to be one of those ‘regular’ wines that was superior far above its branding and price range. My bride considered this her every day drinking wine and we have enjoyed it over the years. About a month ago, we opened and shared our last bottle together, eating at home and greatly enjoying the remembrance of this great wine. The second to last bottle we had was at her 40th birthday party (and made it as part of the Best Wine Meal I have ever had!) a year and a half ago. This was an occasion that was special to us as a couple and needed to be shared as a couple, not with others.
The other recent experience was with my BPAY team and the meal we had at The Cut Bar & Grill. One of the bottles was the 2000 McWilliams Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Shiraz. It was my last bottle and I wanted to share it with the team as respect to them and what a great team that they made. It was one of many great wines that evening and the meal achieved #4 Best Wine Meal ever. I will be writing in detail about that meal and the wines during this week.
Today, we are going to our good friends for one of their typical Sunday lunches (which means we usually finish lunch and drinking wine well after dinner!). We and this couple really enjoy each others company and sharing a good meal and wine together. They both have great palates and he, in particular, loves his Cabernet Sauvignons. Therefore among other things, I am bringing my last bottle of the 1999 Zema Estate Cabernet Sauvignon. Like the 1996 Wolf Blass Grey Label, this wine was superior far above its branding and price range and just got better over the years. And since he loves great Cabernet Sauvignons and we love them, we are bringing this wine to share with them.
I try to make funerals about the celebration of life well lived, and not about loss and sorrow. It is a time to celebrate the passing into the great beyond, the release from our bodily hurt. We need to celebrate with each other and remember the great times we had with the deceased. The only problem is that the guest of honor no longer with us to celebrate. Well the great thing about that last bottle of a great and special wine is that it is there with us to celebrate! And I keep the bottle to remember the great memories throughout the year that accompanied drinking that wine.
Today we will also bring a great bottle of the 2009 Bouchard Pere & Fils Puligny-Montrachet Chardonnay and a bottle of the 1995 Penfolds Adelaide Hills Semillon Trial Bin (which was one of the trial wines for Penfold’s White Grange experiment which resulted in Yatarnna). I have four bottles of this wine, but have never tried one. This will also be a great thing to share with good friends, hopefully because we find out it is a real treasure that has been overlooked. But the featured wine today will be the ‘last’ bottle of the 1999 Zema Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, a great wine with great friends.
I have had some great wines in my lifetime. Most have been memorable of their own accord. But the memories that last forever are when you have a line-up of great friends, great food and great wine, all which match perfectly. The memories of those times are enjoyed forever!
Over the next few weeks, I will be describing each meal, the event that warranted it, the friends involved and the wines, all which made the evening special. But the ranking to make my Top Five all-time wine drinking meals is judged on the wine itself and the wine line-up being truly great. While the friends and food added to the evening, they did not contribute to how that evening ranked – only the wine counted!
In this post, I will provide the event, and the list of wines. In subsequent posts, I will describe the friends and food that matched the wine that made those evenings special. My Top Five evenings (in reverse order) are the following:
#5 evening – My 59th birthday – November 26, 2011, at The Cut Bar & Grill
2005 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon
2000 Waverley Estate Chardonnay
2000 Houghton Museum Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
2000 McWilliams Mt Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Shiraz
1975 Lindemans Porphry
#4 evening – BPAY Architecture and Support team reunion – August 29, 2012, at The Cut Bar & Grill
While we have had some evenings (such as our anniversaries) where the wines have been just as spectacular, they were limited to two bottles. What made the Top Five truly stand out was that we had more friends and more wines to sample, enjoy and compare.
I am actually not sure if I can write about the great time we had for Deanna’s 40th birthday without passing out as just writing up the list has me quivering! I am uncertain if we will ever be able to top that evening, but my 60th birthday is coming up in a few months, so we do have a reason to try! Hopefully, I can use that night to knock off the current #5 and possibly reposition a few of the other four spots!
It is always difficult to determine when to share a truly special bottle of wine and who to share it with. We recently gave our good friends a bottle of 1993 Penfolds Grange for their wedding and within four months, they wanted to open it and share it with us when we came over to their house for dinner last week. While honored that they would love to share such a special bottle with us, we convinced them to save it for a more special purpose like their first anniversary, getting their Australian citizenship, having a child, or something like that.
I have had some truly great wines over the years where I have originally bought a couple dozen bottles, but as I have consumed them and gotten down to my last few bottles (and knowing this vintage of this wine can never be found again, except possibly at auction or in a private cellar), the responsibility grew as to when to serve this bottle and with who to share it.
When I was less mature as a wine drinker (and less mature as a person!), I would want to target a truly special occasion for that last bottle of a truly great wine. It actually got to the point where it was a burden to decide instead of the joy it should have been.
Recently I have changed heart and instead of putting on the pressure to find the a special event to justify that special bottle, I am now looking at how I can consume that special bottle to make an ‘ordinary’ event much more special. Let me give you two examples of that.
I have a group of guys that formed a great team on the last big project I worked on and they are respected and trusted colleagues and friends. Six of us are getting together next Wednesday for a reunion and a great meal out. While the place we are going is not a BYO (Bring Your Own), I know the owner and the sommelier and because I bring a lot of business to them, they are happy to allow me to bring my own wines for special occasions. I have done that for my and my wife’s birthdays for example. And I am doing that again for our reunion. Because of the respect I have for this team of guys, I am bringing some great wines to the meal. It is not a matter of waiting for the right occasion to break out the great wine, but how to make every occasion much better by opening and sharing those special bottles. That is what will make an ‘ordinary’ reunion that much more special.
If we keep waiting for a better occasion, we end up either dead or with a ‘dead’ bottle because we waited far too long. This recently happened to someone with a 1962 Penfolds Grange which was no longer any good because they waited too long.
One of my wife’s all-time favorite wines is the 1996 Wolf Blass Grey Label (which is a blend of 30% Shiraz and 70% Cabernet Sauvignon similar in style to the Penfolds Bin 389). These blends are iconically Australian and make for a tremendous drop. We were fortunate to have bought three dozen bottles of this excellent wine in the late ’90s and I think we paid about $16 per bottle for this wine, but I can’t remember for sure. Several years ago, we put this wine up against the Penfolds Bin 389 in a vertical tasting and compared the 1996 Wolf Blass Grey Label to the 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 2004 Penfolds Bin 389, and the consistent pick for the best wine that evening was the 1996 Wolf Blass Grey Label! That is how good this wine is!
Well, now a decade later, we have one bottle left and I have been thinking about the right time to have it, but I am waiting no more. Instead of finding the right occasion for the wine, I am just going to have the wine tomorrow night as I wanted to make the night more special for my wife and myself instead of it just being an ‘ordinary’ Saturday night at home. We are not sure if we are making spaghetti bolognese, wagyu beef burgers, lamb or whatever, but we know the night will become special because we will be sharing that last bottle of a great wine together.
Therefore, instead of waiting for that absolutely special occasion, my recommendation to you is to look at how you can make ‘ordinary’ occasions far more special by bringing that great bottle of wine to share!
Looking back, I now believe it was a mistake to pass on the 1993 Penfolds Grange at my friends house and we should have made the evening more special by enjoying it together. And (hopefully!) the next time he offers, I will say ‘yes!”
This is my second night in Melbourne and also my second night without any wine, an unusually long time for me! That is becasue I am alone and do not usually like drinking a full bottle by myself. I have been working extremely hard and also networking a great deal, so thought I would take the two evenings to be by myself (missing my loved one though!), rest up, and read and write a bit.
I don’t mind going out to eat alone. When doing so though, I typically will not drink wine a I am reluctant to order a full bottle by myself and very few restaurants have a good wine list of half bottles (a few certainly do, but I am not aware of one close to where I am staying in Melbourne). There are certainly restaurants that sell a number of wines by the glass, but usually these are not the type of wines I like to drink, especially at $14 – $17 per glass! I have too many very good bottles of wine in my cellar for which I paid less per bottle than that!
One of the well known restaurants in Sydney proudly proclaims that they sell 60 different wines by the glass, but there was not one on the list I would pay the per glass price for. There are a few emerging small wine bars that focus on selling premium wines by the glass, but I was not interested in going to a bar – I was interesting in eating a meal and accompanying the meal with a good glass or two. Some of the wine bars that are selling premium wine by the glass also have good tapas and small plates of food to share, so a drink and nibble combination with friends can result in a very nice evening out. But again, I was without friends and looking for a restaurant.
James Halliday shared sage advice when he said it was far better to drink a good beer than poor wine, and I agree with him. Therefore, when I am not aware nor can find a restaurant with good wine by the glass when I am alone, I will usually order a beer, or just water or juice.
And the last two nights I have been quite tired, so after walking around for a while and getting a little fresh air, I decided to just once again get a take-out Subway sandwich and bring it back to my room. Yesterday, I had a Diet Coke with it and today an Iced Tea. Not very exciting, but also no chance of disappointment.
If anyone knows of a decent restaurant (in Melbourne, Sydney, and any other Australian CBD or US city) that has a larger and good selection of very good wines by the glass, it would be great to know. Please comment on your recommendations or write me, and I will keep updating and sharing the list with everyone.
