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May 19

A Mollydooker Moment

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Bright, ecclectic labels, enchanting names, and bold flavours.

I’ve been slowly working my way through the variety of wines in the Mollydooker collection for some time. This company has the user journey nailed – from the bottle store to the bottom of the glass.

Based in McLaren Vale, the Mollydooker vineyard grows Shiraz primarily, as wells as Cabernet, Merlot, Semillon and Chardonnay. I love that their philosophy is all about bringing out the ‘wow’ factor in the wine – it’s all about character, as opposed to the quest for excellence. Labels within the Mollydooker family are bright stars among their pale rivals on the shelf, with bubbly graphics and names like ‘Two Left Feet’, ‘GigglePot’, ‘Enchanted Path’ & ‘Carnival of Love’. Furthermore, each wine has a story to tell.

The 2009 Maitre D’ Cabernet Sauvignon that you see pictured above was named after the winemaker himself (‘Sparky’), who, according to the website, put himself through winemaking college working as a left handed Maitre D’.

This wine is beautiful example of the rich, bountiful flavours produced by Mollydooker. A very sweet red, you’ll be able to taste berries, chocolate, vanilla and spice. It makes for a smoother mouthful on the second day of opening – I would recommend running this one through an aerator if you want to drink it straight away, or leave the cap off for 1/2hr so the first mouthful is as wonderful as the last.

The Maitre D’ would add heart to any meal. I enjoyed it with a slow cooked Lamb, Date & Spinach tagine, and then later with a block of dark chocolate as dessert.

If you have a few minutes to spare, take a wander through the Mollydooker website – it’s a treasure trove of information about the winery, it’s produce and the people behind it. My favourite was the story of Sparky & Sarah and how the success of their winery came to be, among other things ;)

Finally if you’re in the mood for decadence - their 2011 Velvet Glove looks divine. At $185 this is one for a special event – but it’s so beautifully packaged, I’m already thinking about the next occasion that would justify a bottle!

Apr 21

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Parisian Impressions

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Paris is a complex city.

It is contradictory, rhythmic, full of opinion. Everything is layered.

A place of both opulent wealth and bohemian living, the rich wrap themselves in designer brand labels, and the poor cloak themselves in only in their artistry. A jazz player will be found making melodies in the Métro carriage, this priceless gift exchanged roughly for a couple of coins. Well above ground, the parochial wife of a powerful business man swans down the Champs Elysees, draping her exquisite figure in fur, gold and silk.

Chocolate is baked tenderly in butter and pastry, in Boulangeries all over the city. Hundreds upon hundreds of Pain au Chocolat feed a never-ending horde of hungry mouths from dawn until dusk.  Well-versed accents coat the native language in a crisp exoticism, often bewitching and sometimes abusing a mass of beguiled tourists. These visitors flock to the main attractions, Tower de Eiffel, Arc de Triomphe, Musee du Louvre, their cameras working hard to capture every crumb of history and landscape.

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Somewhere between the 7th and 8th Arrondissement, a girl is wrapped tightly in her one and only coat, her nose bright red from the cold, a black and white print scarf wound high around her neck so she can nestle her cheek against occasionally it for warmth. She has less than 5 days to soak up everything that Paris has to offer. Her heels pound the pavement with the mixed force of conviction and desperation – she wants to see all the popular tourist attractions, but also some snapshot of real Parisian culture. This experience she knows she will only stumble upon by luck, tucked away in some dark romantic corner that only the locals know of.

After her 5 days are over, a concoction of happy scribbles have taken note of the following:

- Apartment in the 3rd Arrondissement
- The Eiffel Tower
- Salmon at the St Regis Cafe
-  Jaegermeister for 17€ at the local supermarché
- Champs Elysees (overrated)
- Louis Vuitton & Mercedes
- Wine & Pizza @ Grazie - 91, Boulevard Beaumarchais
- Arc de Triomphe & the roundabout of death.
- The Moulin Rouge (thoroughly uninspiring)
- Da Vinci’s The Mona Lisa, seen from the perspective of a sardine in a tightly packed can of touristes
- A morning run along The Seine – finally beautiful without all the people.
- All the colours of Montmartre
- Saint-Sébastien — Froissart (on line 8 of the Paris Métro)
- Confirmation of the undying wish to become an artist.
- Cigarette Smoke and cured Jambon
- Creperie, pronounced ‘craperie’
- Le Pain Quotidien
- A bottle of Bourdeaux, Foie Gras & Escargot at an exquisite old Train Station (Bouillon Chartier)
- Magic & Disneyland
- A ride on space mountain, and vomit to match.
- Old friends, silly stories & too many shots @ The Bootleg Bar
- One hell of a hangover #worth it
- A lone souvenir
- A sleepy train ride back to England

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Mar 3

Dark Side of The Moon

Dark Side Of The Moon

One balmy night, about three years ago I bought a dusty bottle from a dusty little bottle store,tucked away in a little nook behind a cranny somewhere at the back of Glebe Point Rd. Hungrier than a harras of horses, my companion and I found a homely BYO Italian place to dine right next door, whereupon the contents of the bottle were sipped greedily between large mouthfuls of fresh wood fired pizza.

At the time I didn’t know whether it was the pizza, or the fact that I was already a little tipsy from the cocktails I’d drunk an hour before, but the wine tasted like a drop of heaven. Magically labelled ‘Dark Side Of The Moon‘, this wine left a mysterious mark on my memory.

I didn’t think I’d ever find the same bottle again – I went back to the same place a few weeks later, only to find they’d run out of stock. I searched for it in other popular liquor stores to no avail. Ironically, the pizza place also closed down a few months later, which was sad because their food had heart, as did the people that worked there.

Fast-forward to a couple of days ago when The Dark Side of The Moon decided to come out from the shadows, and wave at me from the Shiraz isle at non other than Dan Murphy’s. The vintage I’m currently drinking is a 2011, so it’s only aged by a year or so, but it’s as rich and subtle as I remember. It’s made by Claymore Wines, of the Clare Valley in South Australia. Check out their website for more on The Dark Side of The Moon (2010 tasting notes only), and their various other wildly-named varieties. Titles like Black Magic Woman, Saltan’s Swing, and Purple Rain, this winery seems to ooze both intimacy and imagination. I thoroughly look forward to trying some of the varieties…

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