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.

tour de france

I sold my television

But I do get text message updates on the Tour de France from people with televisions.

Now the tour is in Chablis; now, in Montrachet.

I lie in my bath and drink a glass of William Fevre Chablis 2003.

Imagine racing a ten-speed bike on roads slippery with white chalk. The cool bright wind against your red hot face and the rhythmic hum of one hundred bicycle wheels behind you...

everyone's a winner baby!

I’ve got a bathtub and an imagination.

And Kraftwerk’s Tour de France playing. A glass of wine.

Who needs a television?

the power of champagne

I went to visit a very good friend I had known a long time who had suffered. In the past year, she had undergone bad luck that had shaken her to the core. Her apartment, never flashy, had begun to feel squalid. My elegant friend, without her usual deep sardonic humour, seemed almost defeated by life.

We talked over cigarettes and milky tea; kicking around old remains from the dusty ruins of her life for an hour or two. She barely smiled. She let her phone ring through. The sun had gone down, but we continued talking as we sat in near darkness.

OK, let’s have a drink

I turned on the light, the sun had finally gone down and it was cool enough to think again. “I’ll get some Champagne.” She smiled wanly; grief had drained the blood from her face, and she perfunctorily lit a cigarette. She loved good wines, and in better times we had often talked about the idea of drinking Champagne and only Champagne; of course, neither of us could afford this dream, and always ended up buying the house wine (but it was a nice dream).

However, I had recently won a bottle of Veuve Clicquot 1999 and had it outside in the car. I came in and lodged it in the freezer for a minute while I cleaned the glasses, breaking one in the sink.

I poured. The Champagne rushed to the top of the glass like absurd snow. It did not fail us. This style, developed in the early 19th century by the widow Madame Clicquot, was a classic bone dry champagne. And yet, nothing about it tasted linear: apples, honeysuckle, grapefruit, marzipan, nougat…

swirls of gold calligraphy in the mouth

We kept talking; we ate some cheese, apple and some cheap cracker biscuits. We stopped our conversation to admire it; the Champagne developed as we talked, spinning into the finest wire of gold. We became hypnotised by its layers and complexity.

Like the Walt Whitman of wine, this Champagne gleefully said, “Do I contradict myself? I contain multitudes!”

My friend’s spirits were raised, she even smiled. We climbed the stairs on to the roof top and looked down into the lit windows of people cooling down for the night. Our spirits had risen as high as the deep blue summer night sky. We remembered our favourite songs. We sang. On the last glass, we even admitted - not everything in life was totally bad.

As the bottle emptied, I said good night. Walking home I thought, would any other wine have done the job? How many other wines can reach out and grab the gold lining from stormy clouds? Our spirits were raised to outrageous levels, our hopes latched onto the promise of each silly bubble.

I drink it when I’m happy and when I’m sad...

Any other wine could have made us even more depressed, but something about Champagne that gives hope, as Lily Bollinger said about the stuff…

"I drink it when I'm happy and when I'm sad.
Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone.
When I have company I consider it obligatory.
I trifle with it if I'm not hungry and I drink it when I am.
Otherwise I never touch it, unless I'm thirsty."

xj

happy delusions

Here's me on Japanese television...

Just reading my notes from a wine tasting. Cause "I know what I like":




Yesterday, before a blind tasting of 40 wines, I'm sure I heard we were tasting Chardonnay. And I swear they were the best 40 Chardonnnay I had ever tasted, even if there was a small voice in my head saying, "this is weird". Then, after writing them all up and scoring each one, I found out they weren't Chardonnay at all. It was all Riesling.

(Riesling is not oaked, light and lime-citrus crisp: the opposite to Chardonnay which is usually oaky, heavier and buttery smooth.)

But I know what I like...

I like television and I like pink and I'm quite...
surprisingly clever

Which made me think, does it really matter what I tasted if I enjoyed it? Maybe it's better to stay happily delusional...

I am the Tsuji Nozomi of wine. "This (wine) is like a room full of stuffed animals and when you go in it's all pink and like the floor is covered in heart-shaped fluffy rugs."

80s Aussie BBQ

Found this in an old box after the sale of a Hunter Valley winery.

Can't you just hear the song, "April Sun in Cuba":

Take me to the April Sun in Cuba, wo-oh-oah! Take me where the April sun gonna treat me so right. So right.

What happened next???

As our ol' PM Bob Hawke said back in 1983:

"Any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum."

P.s. Double click photo to get the full effect!

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Deeply superficial Rosé

Reading Tracey Emin's Guardian column, "My Life in a Column" made me think about Rosé.

I'm at my studio. I'm half a bottle of rosé down. It's five o'clock. It's Friday afternoon and it's Crackerjack time. Fuck it, I make my own invitations. I phone J Sheekey and book a table for six for 10pm.

Then, slowly, everyone at the table is transformed from ghostly apparitions to really good, close friends.

At that, I demand to know where my food is, to find I have already eaten it, and have already paid the bill, and have knocked back half a bottle of dessert wine on top of the three bottles of rosé. Nice one Trace. Really cool. See how you've got a grip of things?

What I don't like in a Rosé - apart from it being too easy to drink. I don't like Rosé that had confectionary coconut-ice characters, tasted like lolly water, had a fluorescent colour, or a strawberry lipgloss aftertaste.

Theory of Capacity by Len Evans

The Len Evans
THEORY OF CAPACITY

1. There is an awful lot of wine in the world, but there is also a lot of awful wine.

2. No sensible person drinks to excess. Therefore any one person can drink only a certain predictable amount.

3. There are countless flavours, nuances, shades of wine; endless varieties, regions, styles. You have neither the time nor the capacity to drink them all.

4. To make the most of the time left to you, you must start by calculating your future capacity. One bottle of wine a day is 365 bottles a year. If your life expectancy is another thirty years, there are only 10,000-odd bottles ahead of you.

5. People who say, “You can’t drink the good stuff all the time” are talking rubbish. You must drink good stuff all the time. Every time you drink a bottle of inferior wine it’s like smashing a superior bottle against the wall. The pleasure is lost forever. You can’t get the bottle back.

6. There are people who build up huge cellars, most of which they have no hope of drinking. They are foolish in overestimating their capacity, but they err on the right side and their friends love them.

7. There are also people who don’t want to drink good wine and are happy with the cheapies. I forgive them. There are others who are content with beer and spirits. I can’t worry about everybody.

8. Wine is not meant to be enjoyed merely for its own sake, it is the key to love and laughter with friends, to the enjoyment of food and beauty and humour and art and music. It rewards us far beyond its cost.

9. What part is wine of your life? Ten per centum? Then ten per centum of your income should be spent on wine.

10. The principles of the theory should be applied to other parts of life. A disciple of the theory kissed a beautiful young lady, who demurred. He was aghast and said, “Don’t get the wrong idea. I’ve worked out that I can make love only another 1,343 times… and I’m bloody sure I’m not wasting one on you.”


RIP Len (1930-2006)

Top 5 Songs on Drinking

So you thought I was going to mention Red Red Wine? No, sorry. I refuse to listen to songs I've heard in either a Westfield Shopping Mall or blaring out of the strip clubs while walking home through Kings Cross. And I've heard this song in both.

Instead, TA-DA!, here are my (totally subjective) top 5 songs about drinking...

5. All I Wanna Do is Have Some Fun – Sheryl Crow

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Yes, yes, you I can hear you groan, so what? Are you serious? But when you really listen, who hasn’t been there in their early twenties, drinking beers while travelling? Listening to it now, it seems like an absolute luxury sitting in a bar talking to local characters. I first heard this when I was 19 and walking around Rome and it seemed like everyone was listening to it. It’s almost Dionysion; under the happy upbeat guitar there’s something dark and maudlin going on when you really listen:

“All I wanna do is have a little fun before I die, says the man next to me, from I don’t know where. Apropos of nothing, he says his name is William but I'm sure it's Bill or Billy or Mac or Buddy… I wonder if he’s had a day of fun in his whole life… We are drinking beer on noon on Tuesday.”

The unexpected philosophical musings of Sheryl Crow leads to number 4 on my list:

4. The Power of Positive Drinking – Lou Reed

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“I don’t like mixers... or sob sisters.”

I hear you, Lou.

This song is really a catalogue of all the different characters and reasons why people drink. You’ll hear every line you have heard from every old man and publican at a bar, like the classic:

“Some people ruin their drink with ice, then they ask you for advice. I've never told this to anyone else before...”

Lou Reed, he's just a got face you can trust.

3. Two More Bottles of Wine – Emmylou Harris

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Ahhh, a sad little country tune from the country musician’s musician. Things are pretty bad for Emmy Lou working in a warehouse in outer LA, her boyfriend’s left her but “everything’s alright because it’s midnight and I got two more bottles of wine”. Emmy Lou is seeing in the sunrise. Hopefully.

2. Barfly – Ray LaMontagne

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Did Ray LaMontagne watch the original Barfly movie before he wrote this mellow work? It’s as if he has channelled Charles Bukowski's spirit and put it in a song; the jack daniels guitar, the soft drums, the thin wire of grief in his voice. The bar stools are packed up on the tables for the night and he’s still there sitting over the last drops of whiskey in his ice.

1. Too drunk to f**k – Dead Kennedys/Nouvelle Vague

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This Nouvelle Vague version of this song reminds me of a great party and having crazy conversations with the funniest girl who didn’t give a shit what people thought because she’s from out of town. And I danced all night. Both versions have all the rollercoaster emotions razorsharp. And let’s face it, at least it’s honest - "Sorry nup just can’t I’ve had 16 beers fallin down stairs - you're out of luck."

Honourable mention: Tom Waits, because I couldn’t choose one song; nearly every song could have made the top five. Even Waltzing Matilda could have been on this list, the way he sings it. Here’s my favourite Tom Waits song…The Piano has been drinking. (Not me.)

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I know there are so many songs I’ve missed, so let me know your favourites.

Why not?

"Wino, kobiety i śpiew"
("Wine, Women & Song" in Polish)

No, I can't speak Polish. But if I could, I'd prefer this title for the blog. Can you see why? It just sounds like the sequence of events on a big night out.

I bring the wine (the wino I am), lose my sobriety ("yeah, yeah sure I'm kobiety) and... um, you can work out the rest.

So. Why am I writing a blog when I write about wine all day? Well, I still love the stuff. In Vino Veritas. In wine is truth.

So let's get to the bottom of the bottle together! Why not?

Love
jmd