It was a warm welcome to the kitchen for Bill Alexiou-Hucker, nephew of the late Chris Alexiou who is well known to most members and the inspiration for the annual Chris Alexiou Trophy for Best Seafood dish. Bill, assisted by Neil Galbraith, produced a terrific Greek-influenced meal featuring seafood, starting with a series of wonderful canapes: freshly made taramasalata with a shaving of smoked mullet roe (botarga) on cucumber rounds; home- made tapenade on toasts with crumbled boiled egg; keftedes, or balls, made on rice, dill and fetta; and warm dolmades with a rich yoghurt, garlic and mint dipping sauce. All were pretty well matched with a 2005 Wine Society Tasmanian Riesling, broad but still fresh and nervy, and of course a Lustau manzanilla sherry.

Seafood came to the fore again with the main course, medium sized octopus cleaned and dressed before being slow braised in white wine with herbs and served on Greek pilaf rice, or pilafi, sprinkled with lemon juice and with burnt butter added at the end, together with nicely crunchy beans enlivened with a chorizo crumble. The octopus was soft and moist with subtle flavours allowed to come through by the simple braise: a worthy contender for the Chris Alexiou trophy.

With the food, the Wine Master managed to pull out a 2012 Thalassites white from Santorini, made on assyrtiko grapes and showing high acid but interesting floral/herbal notes which actually went better with the food than the 2000 Tyrrells Vat 1 semillon served with it, also still freshly acid, with typical semillon grass and lemon still developing but inclined to be overpowered.

We were spared a Greek cheese, enjoying instead an aged Gouda from Holland, well developed with good texture and rich nutty sweet flavours on the palate . A green leaf salad with rocket and toasted walnut pieces in a mild vinaigrette was a good accompaniment, as were a couple of reds, the first a 2012 Gaia wine from Nemea in Greece, made from Agiorgitiko grapes and showing cabernet-like berry characters, although still too young and a bit hard (though it improved in the glass). No such problems with a 2002 Chapel Hill cabernet from McLaren Vale and Coonawarra: a rich forward nose with plenty of Oz fruit character and a good balance of tannins.

The feast concluded with a medium roast Honduran coffee, quite fruity in the mouth with refreshing acidity which gave it length.