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

Food

Today’s lunch we saw the return of Varun and team from Manjit’s restaurant King’s Street wharf. Varun was introduced to our Society by member Grant Montgomery, they specialise Northern Indian style food. We had a feast with dishes ranging from street food to tandoori to their famous butter chicken. Famous because it was invented by their uncle. The main ingredients then were canned tomato soup, cream and chicken tikka. Food of quality and quantity, we sat for our canapés and entrees with wines served to the table. It was all there; colour and movement, texture and flavour, spice and heat, all handled and presented as we’d expect from a restaurant of this quality.

Canapes

Mini veg pakoras (fritters)

Chicken Sri Lankan rolls

Entrée

Chicken Banjara - the chicken is coated in a spicy marination of yogurt and then grilled in the tandoor.

Lamb Seekh Kebab (minced and skewered lamb)

Aloo Tikki Chaat, fried potato patties topped with sweet and sour tamarind chutney, spicy green chutney and yoghurt.

Mains

Rice

Butter Chicken

Lamb Roganjosh a very popular curry.

Dal Makhani lentil dips made with ura dal spices, cream and butter.

Bangain Bhartha. Bhartha is made with eggplant and tomato, and seasoned with cumin, turmeric garlic and ginger. Served with fresh naan bread.

Dessert

Gulab Jamun with ice cream, a ball of deep-fried paneer boiled in sugar syrup.

We gave our Cheesemaster a day off, this was a great way to finish dominated by cloves and rose water it was palate cleansing.

Wine

We were treated to some very fine Indian food which always makes it a bit tricky to assess the accompanying wine. Before I present my report on our lunch.

I just wanted to say how touched I am by the level of support I so often get from various members of our Society. Producing a weekly report to a gathering of wine experts and actual winemakers is a daunting task, however, from the outset, I discarded any self doubt and ploughed on regardless, determined to report with integrity, on how I saw the wines on that particular day. From comments I receive it seems I get it about right a lot of the time, other times very much not so. On such occasions, I imagine some may think, “this guy could not pick a Chardonnay from a glass of caustic soda!” It goes with the territory.

What however I do try hard to do is produce something interesting, informative and at times amusing, but above all else, never boring. Just keep those letters and cards rolling in folks, your encouragement is appreciated. SO’H.

Today we commenced with a Mosaique Champagne NV. Nice fine bead, with little bubbles, quite dry with a crisp acidic finish. More than adequate for an aperitif.

The first wine with the spicy food was a Gunderloch German Riesling 2021 11.5% from the Rhinehessen. An excellent wine, with great fruit, not at all sweet, balanced and finishing with an appealing aftertaste. Most enjoyable.

The same could not be said for the next wine, an Andrew Thomas Hunter Sem 2023, 8.5%. I am normally a fan of his wines, a top quality producer, but what on earth was he doing with this horrible little number? Over sugared, excessive acid, released after only 1 year from vintage, this was a wine that took me back 50 years to some of the truly horrible white wines that were sometimes produced in the Hunter at that time. I can understand how our Winemaster picked this wine to combat the strong spicy flavours of the food, and I suppose a sip of this with a mouthful of hot Indian food would override the excessive sugar, allowing the wine to be swallowed, but left to itself without any food, the wine had little to offer. Nasty.  

Wine three was a Hugel Gewurztraminer 2019. Now this is a bit more like it, a great food wine for the spicy stuff, well balanced, mouth-filling but not cloying, clean finish. It is very hard to have a wine that satisfactorily complements Indian food, but this wine is about as close as you can get in my opinion. An excellent choice.

Wine four was my favourite of the day, the John Duval Entity Shiraz 2015 14.5%. I love his wines, being head winemaker at Penfolds for many years says it all about his ability to produce superb red wines. Since leaving Penfolds he has done consultancy work as well as producing magnificent wines from Barossa fruit under his own label. This is one of them.  This wine exposed dark cherry, plumb and spicy Shiraz flavours, some tannin and oak, all of which came together in the mid palate producing a superb array of rounded flavours. My style of Shiraz, just wish my pocket felt the same way! John Duval must be our Patron Saint of Barossa Red Wines.

The final wine was the Eden Rd 2019 14.5% Shiraz. This attractive wine was grown in the Canberra wine region as it is now known, roughly between Lake George and Yass. Despite the fact that it was batting after Bradman, as I have frequently said about a wine following  a star, this wine was excellent. Lighter than the Entity, this wine was, medium body, but great spicy Shiraz fruit with a clean, but enjoyable tannic finish, much less dense than the Entity.   I could not help but think how this wine would compare with the Entity if it were 4 years older. Very favourably I would think.

Some terrific reds were a great way to finish the day.