Food review by Peter Kelso (the CoTD) and wine review by Stephen O'Halloran

Food

Canapes

The first was a walnut and pomegranate paste made on fresh walnuts and pomegranate molasses. It is actually from Turkeye (Türkiye? Turkey? get the spelling right), where it is known as muhammara. Sweet, spicy and a bit nutty.

The other was falafels, made from a mix available commercially, with parsley and some cumin added. More laziness with the accompanying relish of chilli and tomato bought at Harris Farm and not interfered with.

Main

My own version of a Moroccan slow-cooked lamb. The boned and diced lamb shoulder was slow-cooked with onion, garlic, chickpeas (tinned), pomegranate seeds, pomegranate molasses, za-atar (a thyme-based Middle Eastern spice mix), diced quinces and a bit of harissa (obviously not enough for many). Diced eggplant was added later. I deliberately avoided the usual sticky dates, prunes or dried apricots, with only the quince and the two forms of pomegranate providing sweetness. It was served, naturally, with couscous, cooked with chicken stock and with currants and butter added to give it a bit more interest.

Salad

A Society favourite, roasted red capsicum, cut into strips and marinated in olive oil. Some diced preserved lemons and capers were scattered over to enhance the ME theme. I thought it went particularly well with the washed rind cheese.

Wine

Many happy returns to all our equine friends of whom I have none, but I had once upon a time some friends who had horse friends and now have neither the horse nor any money. I often used to say that in NSW when someone goes bad, you can trace it to the track.

Anyhow, moving right along to today’s festivities we kicked off with a Keith Tulloch 2010 Semillon @ 11%. Some very fussy tasters detected excessive skin in the wine. To me it was a reasonable 13 yo Hunter Sem, doing its job just fine.  Plenty of fruit and acid to carry it along for a few more years.

We then went on to a mystery tour of cellar drops providing a variety of different wines at random. I happened across the Brian Croser Riesling from 2008, a wine from Oregan USA and a Minaia Gavi 2021. I have tasted both of these wines before. My previous experience with the Croser wine was positive, but not so this time. On prior occasions, the wine was aged as you would expect but still had vitality and good residual acid, enjoyable. Today I found the wine showing signs of bottle age, falling acid and a slight resinous taste. OK to drink, but you would not order another bottle.

The Gavi continues to impress from my initial contact some months ago. Good balance, clean, fruit driven A great all-rounder for an aperitif, no wonder the Italians like it so much!

With the main course, we had two Australian Cabernets, both from Coonawarra a Wynns 2009 and a St Hugo 2002. These wines seemed to provoke a mixed reception. There were some commentators in the Wynns camp and others like me, firmly in the St Hugo tent.  From my own assessment, I found the Wynns a big fruit style of Cabernet, but strangely finishing with a very dry aftertaste devoid of much flavour at all. On the other hand, the St Hugo although 7 years older, had a far more appealing Cabernet finish, delicious and lingering. I thought it was the superior wine.  

We then proceeded onto the cheese, a Milawa washed rind. We enjoyed two very distinctive wines, a German Kabinett Riesling at 8% and at the other end of the scale an Australian Merlot at 14.5% from master winemaker Stephen Pannell from his Adelaide Hills Vineyard. The Riesling was to me out of place, but several in the room thought the matching with the cheese was excellent What would I know? The wine was delicious, crisp and clean, but with cheese? Maybe a peach. To each their own. At the opposite end, the Malbec was huge, big black colour, nearly sucking the light out of the room! Plummy overtones, concentrated and intense, but to my taste a little one-dimensional and did not leave much on the palate by way of aftertaste.