Sydney Icebergs

This is the real Sydney: The Bondi Icebergs restaurant. Yep, sure.

Enough beautiful people. Next week I'm leaving Sydney for London.

SEE YA LATER, SYDNEY!

mwa mwa etc etc


(Winner of Good Living 'Shoot the Chef' Photography Competition - please contact me for copyright and your name! Great photo, plus I have always had a crush on David Wenham.)

Australian and French wine, vive la difference

Australia: smells like Teen Spirit

What's the difference? One’s good, one’s crap... Yes, a stupid answer; and yet, some UK critics think this is a sophisticated response. (Obviously, this is not my opinion).

French wines have terroir and Australian wines do not. Blah, blah. Can anyone say that with a straight face now after watching Michel Rolland in the documentary, Mondovino? Both countries have “flying winemakers” who consult across regions and countries. M. Rolland himself travels around the world re-creating the “Bordeaux style.”

Terroir is about how the character of the land shows in the glass. To say Australian wine has no terroir is really a backhanded way of saying Australian wine has no character. Ridiculous; unless you are only drinking wine with “little critter” labels. Maybe you have a point, but then if you are drinking those wines to the exclusion of all the other amazing regions in Australia are you really qualified to comment?

And have you seen the wines from Languedoc-Rousillon recently? More critters!

I can taste the sunshine and optimism in an Australian wine, especially next to a French wine. (That’s not necessarily something I value, but I think I can taste it in a blind tasting.) Unfortunately, in these days of globalisation, standardisation and micro-oxygenation, the differences between wine regions is not always apparent – even between the old and new world.

Vive la difference

Here's a little tasting I did recently comparing French and Australian wine style.

Chardonnay

Joseph Drouhin 2004 Saint-Veran $AU 28.95

A simple White Burgundy with pretty green glints. Still refreshing for a 2004 vintage, but not much longer to live. Enjoyed the darker tones of malolactic fermentation and oak; the fruity, flowery characters are more of an afterthought. Technically, nothing wrong, but a bit textbook. Good with a bowl of mussels.


Dorrien Estate Barossa Valley Chardonnay 2004
Compared to the White Burgundy this is a like an over-smiling idiot. I want to slap the fruit right out of the glass. A shame as Dorrien Estate is doing some interesting certified organic wines. This Chardy is now 3 years old. Was the fruit more amusing when it was younger? I’m bored of the willingness-to-please sunshine in a bottle, next.



Brunel Cailloux - Chateauneuf du Pape 2001
Like an Angus steak kept for 100 days before it is thrown on the hot plate. This has big fat meaty characters with a slightly bitter and astringent finish. This is not *fun * which makes it more exciting. A wine for the slightly bored.

M/g/s Yalumba Barossa Valley 2003
Now this is what Australia is good at – pure, streamlined fruit blended seamlessly. Like modern architecture where the corners are spherical, seamless, streamlined. Not sweet like most M/g/s. Cool label.

An aside, but worthwhile noting:

Nuits St-Georges, Les Vaucrains, 1er Cru $AU 138
This is a dark brooding red that I kept beside me for a few hours to see how it would change over time. It's one of those French Pinot Noir wines that can not be replicated and gives credence to the terroir concept. There is no happy fruit here, just long nights spent in a pool room smoking cigars on deep leather lounges. Complex layers of spice and earth with a strange touch of rose petal that comes as a surprise as this wine is anything but feminine. Captivating in the take no prisoners way. But watch out for Stockholm Syndrome - I was taken by my captor. The ruder and more astringent it became over time, the more I liked it.

The Empire is Dead. Long live the Empire!

Here's a message to all Sydney pubs from me, written by New York poet Chi Chi Valenti

Take back the Night

Take it back from mere attitude and return it to grand gesture.

Take it back from every futures trader yearning for a new life.

Take it back from sweater consultants and out-of-town investors.

Return it to ruined men with no feeling for the masses, and no stomach for the shameless sell.

The Empire Hotel in Annandale is the self-proclaimed Home of Sydney Blues. Right now it is closed for renovations, until September 16.

Can you put new wine in old bottles?

The good news. When it re-opens, the Empire will have a new backstage area (no more stumbling over guitars lined up in the hallway) and a beer garden (so you can hear the music and have a smoke).

The bad news? Well, let's hope it doesn't become a sports bar with fluorescent lighting and bored DJs. I'd prefer the old betting area with the blue TV glare of the horses races in Hong Kong than that!

They wouldn't, would they? On the final week before it closed for renovations, on a cold June night standing outside on Parramatta road for a smoke, I heard many rumours from the local regulars. But the website is still taking bookings for gigs when they re-open, so that's a good sign.

I just hope The Empire doesn't become one of these pubs popping up like cool death around Sydney and about as atmospheric as a dentist's waiting room.

I DON'T WANT MY BLUES CLEAN - I DON'T GO THERE IN THE DAYLIGHT!!!

The Empire I know is the one place in Sydney where you expect to see Bukowski in the corner writing a poem on a napkin. Blues music thrives in an environment of barflys, beer-spilt carpets and dark corners. A talk, a drink and people playing their soul. That's what it's about.

Chris, the bar manager, said it will be kinda retro and not too futuristic "so if you throw up it won't disappear into nothing." It will have air-conditionining. But without the mask of cigarette smoke there’s always the smell of stale beer, sweat and Parramatta Road.

Hmm. I know which carcinogens I'd prefer in the "Home of Sydney Blues."

Somehow I don't think out-of-town investors, futures traders and sweater consultants are reading from the same song book.

Here's the url to The Empire Hotel Annandale's webpage.
(btw - no one is paying me, worst luck. This is merely a salute for those about to rock. There are very few places left in Sydney to do that anymore, so let's keep it alive.)

The Foul and the Fragrant

The aromas of the “fleshy madness” taking over Paris on a rainy evening, when the “dripping city exhaled an unpleasant odour suggestive of a great untidy bed."

L’Assommoir, Emile Zola

Have you ever really smelled a carnation? Put your nose deep in – you'll find it has a sweet, blood-like, meat smell.

Outside the strip clubs in Kings Cross they sell them on the street; old carnations dyed a bizarre radioactive blue and ultra-violet black.

I like these hyper-real flowers. Just the thing for drunk guys to buy, take into Porky's Nitespot in Kings Cross at 3am and give to an unknown stripper whilst confessing undying love for them – oh yeah everything looks like a good idea under neon.

But do these inter-galactic carnations have a smell? It's hard to tell. These old carnations are too often overpowered by the miasma of stale alcohol, old vomit and sweaty junk along Darlinghurst Road.

Can I get all Baudelaire on your ass?

ah! the poor flowers of the Cross. They were once white and pure and now they're dyed…etc.

Nah, it’s never that simple. However, apart from the rose, the carnation is the most tortured and abused flower. The rose is hybridised; the carnation, bastardised. Constant experimentation with high school chemistry lab dyes has left the carnation with little dignity. (Of course, too many 80s weddings featuring carnations in Baby's Breath can't have helped their reputation either).

But could it be, on an instinctual level, the blood-like smell is deeply scary - even gory? The redolence of blood, a reminder of death? Red and white carnations often feature on top of coffins before they’re finally incinerated. Maybe, deep down, carnations can remind us of things that make us uncomfortable.

But is it offensive?

No. Anyway, what is an offensive smell? As I wrote about wine in an earlier post, "what makes a wine sexy?" I often find technical wine faults, that others find offensive, to be quite enjoyable. It can sometimes make the wine more interesting.

Some people describe Brett (Brettanomyces) as a mousey smell. But I never get that: I get an earthy nuance, a funkiness. Let's just say I’d never tip wine out in the sink just because it’s “dirty” – now that's something I would find offensive!

A dirty woman

My favourite wine descriptor, "This tastes like a dirty woman." The mind boggles. Gerry Sissingh descibing a wine at a Hunter Valley tasting. Perhaps Gerry was succinctly describing the Brett character that can characterise Hunter Shiraz. But, then again, perhaps he was not – who really knows??

Another favourite description of the fine line between the fragrant and foul is Len Evans describing a wine as much like “an actresses’ handbag.”

I don't know what an actresses handbag smells like, I can only have a good guess. His description certainly makes the wine tasting more interesting – for the conversastion that follows alone.

And like the neon blue carnations of the Cross, there's no right or wrong when it comes to taste. Well, perhaps there is a truly foul and a truly fragrant. But I like them both.