Food review by James Hill and wine review by Stephen O'Halloran

Food

Matthew Holmes was chef of the day presenting a spring lunch with a ‘Ship and Shore’ theme.

Canapés

It’s the perfect time of the year for freshly shucked oysters, served with lemon. Rich and briny they were delicious.

Matt was assisted by our cheese master Mark Bradford who prepared ‘Gildas’. These Basque tapas are named for a passionate beauty played by Rita Hayworth. Red and green peppers on pintxo are wrapped with anchovy and capped with green Spanish olive.

Then followed some warm toasts topped with halloumi, mozzarella and mini prawns.

Main course

Oven baked pancetta wrapped Norwegian Atlantic salmon on a bed of fried Brussel sprouts & potato pennys, with asparagus in a beurre blanc of lemon and dill sauce made from chicken stock, cream, butter, garlic and cayenne pepper, garnished with fried capers.

Great robust flavours and perfectly presented. The sprouts were rendered in fat from the pancetta and served under the potatoes garnished with lemon zest.

The asparagus was perfectly cooked sitting in a lemony beurre blanc of dill, chicken stock, cream and butter. There was some size variation in the salmon it was pink and moist in the middle, where it counts.

A great combination of flavour and texture perfectly executed within many suggesting Chef of the Year nomination worthy.

Two types of bread today. With main seeded sourdough and for the cheese course crunchy sourdough baguette.

Cheese

Cheese master Mark Bradford presented a French cow’s milk cheese ‘Comte’.

Made from unpasteurised milk, this hard-cooked raw milk cheese is made at small dairies or fruitieres using the milk from several herds of Montbeliard cows. This cheese was matured in the damp underground cellars of Marcel Petite at Fort Saint Antoine high in the mountains that border France and Switzerland in the Franche-Comte.

Wine

Matt Holmes produced a terrific lunch with some fresh oysters to get us started with the right frame of mind before we embarked on the main course of some baked salmon. Delicious.

With the oysters and other pass arounds, we started with a Riesling 2016 by KT Wines, from Watervale. 12%. Perfect. Now a 7yo and drinking beautifully. Great balance of acid and fruit. Hard to see it getting any better, but by the same token ticks all the boxes for another good 5 years or so.

Our Winemaster then treated us to two Chablis for the fish main, both from the very respected producer William Fevre, one a Petit Chablis and the other a Chablis, both from 2019 and both 13%. Both wines I thought were excellent. Except for a Grand Cru, of which I have been fortunate to sample several over the years, these wines today were delightful White Burgundy styles, but not an identifiable true Chablis. In his opening remarks, our Winemaster commented that climate change/warming has brought about a subtle change in the Chardonnay grapes grown in the Chablis Region, which is in the far Northern sector of Burgundy. The classic Chablis has a dry, flinty and steely taste, quite unmistakable. The wines today tasted much more like a softer White Burgundy from the warmer regions of Burgundy some 100 km to the south.

Of the two wines, I enjoyed them both, with the Chablis having a deeper colour and more complexity of flavour. I did enjoy the Petit, but the step-up in quality was noticeable.

The cheese wines were a Wynns Black Label Shiraz from Coonawarra 2012, 13.5% and a Craggy Range Gimblett Gravels Syrah 2008 also 13.5% from Hawkes Bay NZ. Both excellent. Big dense Shiraz, but no excessive alcohol, 13.5% just about right. A fair amount of bottle age on both, but to its credit the Craggy was not noticeably older. Two well-made Shiraz, still with time ahead. We are indeed fortunate at the WFS.