Food
Food & Wine Festival in Melbourne – ein Must für alle Weinfans
The Festival in Melbourne 2010
Ein kleiner Hinweis für alle Fans des Melbourne Food & Wine Festivals: am kommenden Freitag, den 5. Februar 2010 wird in einer Beilage von ‘The Age’ eine freie Kopie des offiziellen Festivalführers sein.
Hier sind über 250 Events genannt, kommentiert und mit Daten und Zeiten garniert. Ein sehr wichtiger Begleiter für die Vorbereitung des Festivals, das alljährlich viele Tausend Wein- (und Foodfreunde) aus aller Welt anzieht – von daher nicht vergessen.
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Don‘t forget to buy The Age next Friday (5 February) for your free copy of the annual official Festival Guide, for the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, featuring over 250 events. A must for the informed wine enthusiast downunder.
Michael Brecht
Scenic place for visitors – Doyles restaurant in Sydney’s Watsons Bay
Is this a great restaurant, or is it only a scenic place to take visitors?
I am torn between these two opinions when I walk into Doyles Restaurant in Watsons Bay in Sydney’s chique Eastern suburbs. Watson’s Bay, that is the last place in Sydney’s East, just before the ocean hits the rugged shore; no question – the restau is located at a marvelous place.
Doyles Restaurant in Watsons Bay
In almost Italian style, it is positioned right on a small beach with crystal clear water no more than 10m away from your dinner table. And a few miles towards the west, there is the skyline of Sydney’s CBD with a glimpse of the upper half of the mighty Harbour Bridge. Come here late afternoon and you are able to see one of the most amazing sunsets, Australia has on offer.
The restaurant is the flagship of a series of outlets from one of Sydney’s reknown families, the Doyles. Signs at the doors and a well written menu explain the history of family and its restaurants. The fish is great, the wine menu extensive, though in the past years, the Doyles family has made sure, that many of the wines are now branded in their own name. A nice add-on to the bottom line in today’s difficult high-end foodie marketplace.
I have to admit: we have taken most of the overseas visitors to this place, it is simply ideal for the grown-ups to dine out and our kids to have a play at the beach. Too easy mate.
The fish is usually excellent, the kids menu helps keep the young ones come from the beach for a quick bite.
But what I don’t like about Doyles are two things: most fish meals start at $35 upwards and the portions are more ‘french cuisine’ than aussie style. On top of that, we have been very disappointed with staff, usually slack, mostly talking between themselves and not particularly helpful.
Refreshments
If you are after a spectacular view with some nice fish and a few big wine names on the list, this is the place to dine out – if you are looking for a restaurant with perfection in service and value for money, you better chose somewhere else.
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Das Doyles Restaurant in Watsons Bay ist ein herrlicher Platz für einen ausgiebigen Blick auf den Sonnenuntergang. Sydney’s Zentrum und die obere Hälfte der Bögen der Sydney Harbour Bridge liegen umgeben von rotem Sonnenlicht in der Ferne, das Wasser umspielt den kleinen, feinsandigen Strand direkt vor ihrem Tisch.
Ihr Michael Brecht
Lunch at Orange’s most famous bank
The old and heritage listed building of Union bank in Orange is the place to be while heading for lunch or dinner. Light meals garned with local produce help you concentrate on the major reason why being there: the wines.
Union Bank in Orange
Unionbank’s wine list is outstanding. It includes both – the local top drops and some of my favourite wines from all over Australia.
The owners of Unionbank are well known for hosting wine dinners with celebrity winemakers from various other regions. This week Clonakilla’s own Tim Kirk from Murrumbateman in the Canberra District hosts a 5 star dinner with his wines on trial.
The wine store next door is home to many wonderful wines from across the country, from Sorrenberg Gamay to Ben Glaetzer’s Godolphin, from D’Arenberg’s Dead Arm to Moss Woods finest wines, you’ll find them here. Rarely have I seen a bottleshop that well equipped in the midst of a wine region itself.
So give this restaurant a try – and help yourself to a few wines on the glass, this is a great opportunity to get to know the local stars of the Orange wine district or even beyond.
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Wine store and Wine Bar
Mitten im Zentrum der 30,000 Einwohner zählenden Weinmetropole Orange liegt das alte Gebäude der Union Bank. Darin befindet sich ein gut gestyltes Restaurant mit gleichem Namen und einem kleinen Biergarten direkt hinter dem Haus. In der Remise nebenan ist ein Bottleshop – gefüllt mit den Top-Weinen aus der Region und aus ganz Australien.
Ich habe hier Down Under sehr selten einen solch gut sortierten Weinhandel gesehen, der inmitten einer der Weinregionen liegend den Fokus auch auf die hochklassigen (und -preisigen) Weine anderer Regionen Australiens und Neuseelandes gelegt hat. Der Grund: “die Weine aus unserer Region hier in Orange müssen sich auch im Laden gegen die besten Weine aus ganz Australien beweisen koennen – deshalb führen wir ein solch breites exklusives Sortiment,” erklärt mir Nick Butler, Sales Manager im Wine Store in unserem Gespräch.
Keine Frage – der Besuch lohnt sich.
Ihr Michael Brecht
Rockpool’s Bar and Grill wine list on top with 3,500 different wines in the cellar
Rockpool wins best wine list 2010
Australian Gourmet Traveller magazine has named the top honours for restaurants and bars at the 2010 Restaurant Awards here Down Under this week. Sydney’s Rockpool Bar and Grill has the top winelist in the country, a great and well deserved result.
Australia’s Star Chef Neil Perry and his business partners, Trish Richards and David Doyle were thrilled with these awards and commended the restaurant’s dedicated wine team, consisting of Nicole Reimers (Wine List Consultant) and Sophie Otton (Head Sommelier) who, with Doyle, were responsible for creating the list that features over 3,500 different wines.
Representing an investment of $9 million, Doyle has spent over 20 years amassing the core of the restaurant’s extraordinary wine list.“We believe that enjoyment of wine is a key aspect of the Rockpool Bar & Grill experience and in order to provide our diners with enough choice among the world’s best wines, we have assembled what they believe to be one of the best wine lists in the world,” says Doyle.
Let us reflect on these numbers: it would take me almost 10 years, if I would frequent Rockpool Bar and Grill daily and chose a different bottle of wine each time! My bank manager would most likely stop me doing that after the first couple of weeks, so there is a limited risk for me to drink this much in the years to come.
The oldest bottle stems from 1795 with 32 selections of Penfolds Grange as the major highlight of fine Australian wines. For those who can afford to dine out in Rockpool’s art deco skyscraper we can confirm: the list includes expensive rare and fine wines as well as less expensive and still drinkable reds and whites. Apparently about 10% of the wine on the list cost less than $100 – to be honest, we haven’t counted them (yet).
Congratulations to the Rockpool team for taking the prize this year, their first since opening in early 2009.
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Sydney’s hippest Restaurant in diesen Tagen ist das Rockpool Bar & Grill, seine Weinkarte erhielt dieser Tage die Auszeichnung: Best Australian Wine List. 3.500 Weine aus allen Teilen dieser Welt wurden von Star-Chef Neil Perry und seinen Geschaeftspartnern gesammelt und hier gelagert, ein Investment von ca. $9 Millionen.
Wir gratulieren dem Rockpool Bar & Grill und empfehlen Ihnen den Blick auf Weinkarte bei Ihrem naechsten Besuch in der pulsierenden Metropole Down Under. Sydney hat mit dieser Weinkarte einen klaren kulinarischen Vorteil im Staedteduell mit Melbourne – fuer dieses Jahr zumindest.
Krinklewood – biodynamic wine tastes of where it is grown
We are sitting in Bowral’s Wild Food Cafe, a great place for a healthy lunch and now also open in Bondi Junction in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs.
This place here is licensed and on each table, you’ll find a sign indicating that Wild Food requires ‘wild wines’. Krinklewood from the Hunter Valley in NSW makes biodynamic wines and although many traditional wine makers are not too keen on their rise, the biodynamic wine market is doing just that.
Wild Food offers a Wild Red, 100% Shiraz, which displays lifted berry fruits and is a medium bodied wine with soft tannins. Their Wild White is a Verdelho with a very golden straw look, tropical fruit on the nose and fresh passion fruit on the palate. “We use no pesticides or chemical sprays”, promises Rod Windrim from Krinklewood.
We realise that there is a lot changing in biodynamic wine making, changed since the first days of winemakers planting their vines at full moon and the like. The biodynamic scene in Australia is getting momentum and we will carefully watch their progress.
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Die Weinszene Australiens beschaut mit einer gehoerigen Portion an Misstrauen die Fortschritte der biodynamischen Weinbauern. Im Wild Food Cafe in Bowral treffen wir auf Krinklewood Weine, aus dem grossartigen Hunter Valley – Shiraz und Verdelho – zwei Weine, die man sich merken muss.
Ihr Michael Brecht
Cool delights in the Southern Highlands
Last weekend saw the first ‘Cool Flavours’ event of its kind here in the Southern Highlands. The tourism bureau in Mittagong had labeled this long weekend the ‘Event of Cool Delights’ and the event met all expectations: great food, a great selection of wines to taste from the region and it was cool – extremely cool.
Cool Delights at Tertini Cellar Door
A Queens Birthday weekend is usually the start for the cold winds in the Southern Highlands and that is what we got. Colder temperatures with a very chilly breeze invited all of us to focus on red wines and find our spot close to the next open fire. The cellar door of Tertini Wines luckily had both and so we indulged in their Italian cheeses, great Pinot Noirs and I didn’t move from the fireplace myself.
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Im Juni wird hier in Australien der Geburtstag der Koenigin gefeiert, auch wenn der tatsaechliche Geburtstag der 21. April ist. Sei’s drum, der Montag ist anerkannter Urlaubstag und so entschloss sich die hiesige Region in den Southern Highlands, das Wochenende zum ‘Food and Wine’-Wochenende zu vermarkten. Bei eisig kalten Winden wurden vor allem die roten Weine probiert und gekauft, ich selbst positionierte mich bei Tertini Wines an deren offenem Feuer und genoss italienischen Kaese zu feinstem Pinot Noir. Cool climate eben.
Ihr Michael Brecht
White wine tasting dinner at Mount Barker in Western Australia
These are exciting times. With our recent growth in readership across Australia and abroad, more and more wineries are contacting us here at downunderwines with the request to publish information or to try wines from regions we were not covering before. This is what our wine blog is all about: getting to understand more about wines from across Australia and sharing this knowledge with you.
Harvesting at Galafrey Wines near Mount Barker
This post is about a wine dinner to be held in Western Australian wine region Mount Barker. Situated in the South of the most western state here down under, the region is home to some excellent wineries such as Plantagenet (we wrote this article right at the beginning of this blog and therefore it is in German language only), Galafrey Wines with its incredibly active operations manager Kim Tyrer or Xabregas Wines, of which we will taste some drops in one of our coming stories.
The Mount Barker Wine Producers Association is organising this year’s wine dinner as a white wine tasting of Mount Barker’s best drops. Wines from nine wineries have been chosen by wine writer Peter Forrestal to complement a degustation menu prepared by Frasers’ Restaurant Executive Chef Chris Taylor.
So if you are in the region on Friday 26th of June, do not miss this event but as the seats are limited, you have to book early by contacting info@galafreywines.com.au .
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Unser stuermisches Wachstum in den vergangenen Monaten zeigt erfreuliche Nebenwirkungen. Immer mehr Weingegenden, Winzer oder deren Vertriebskraefte kontaktieren uns, um ihre Region, ihren Wein oder gar bestimmte events ueber downunderwines zu promoten. Wir finden das grossartig – denn so koennen wir Ihnen die Vielfalt der australischen Weinwelt zeitnah naeher bringen und lernen so ganz nebenbei selbst dazu. Good on you guys!
Anabel
Happy Easter in Australia and all over the world
Painted vines on egg
Our team here at Downunderwines wishes all our readers a happy Easter. For many of us a long 40 day period of lent reaches its end, a period of no alcohol and for some of us even no chocolate.
This year we have a friend from South Australia stay with us – she carefully crafted this egg to be presented on Easter Sunday.
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Wir wuenschen allen unseren Lesern und Ihren Familien ein frohes Osterfest. Besten Gruss aus dem inzwischen herbstlichen Down Under.
Ihr Michael Brecht
