Food review by Frank Liebeskind and wine review by Stephen O’Halloran

Food

This was a wine tasting lunch, with the food worthy of Chef of the Year cook-off.

Canapes

We started with three canapes, prepared by Paul Thorne and Gary Linnane.

The star to me was Paul’s brilliant duck consomme, Paul’s is the master of duck consomme, full of flavour, and clear as…. Paul said, “duck consomme with star anise raftered through egg white”. Thank you Paul.

Paul also did an explosion in the mouth goat's cheese tart, with pea puree, honey, and topped with pickled radish.

Gary did a very tasty French bean and anchovy blend, on crisp savoury biscuits topped with chopped chives. It was a great accompaniment with the King Valley Blanc de Blanc wine.

Main

Jonathon served a “stack” of shredded brisket, topped with a great mash, topped with a portabella mushroom, with spinach (Popeye eat your heart out) and a jus.

Jonathon told us the recipe itself was suggested by James Hill though it turns out he hadn't tried it himself ????

Its official title was shredded beef brisket on creamy potatoes topped with confit mushrooms. Thanks to the team in the kitchen the mash was so creamy we changed the order so that the brisket formed the base with the mash on top and then the mushroom over that. I think that not only made stacking easier, I think it made the stack visually more enticing.

The brisket was cooked at 130/140° C for eight hours, then shredded by hand. The mushroom was baked at 150°C for 40 minutes with thyme, garlic and olive oil (bloody outstanding).

Jonathan went to Bunnings and bought 9mm wide PVC tubing and cut the tubes (6cm lengths) to provide the 9mm mould to stack the layers, the layering looked beautiful on the plate. Beautiful meal, and to me the mushroom was the hero. How did you get 40+ mushrooms all the same size? Answer, he trimmed some to fit.

The kitchen plated 10 at a time. Each tube was filled with the brisket and then the potato purée and set the mushroom on top. We drizzled the sauce on it and around the plate. To accompany there was shredded spinach.

Jonathon obtained the brisket from Australian Meat Emporium (one of my favourite butchers) and yes, he put on the coat to enter the Emporium’s huge cool room. Mushrooms from his local Orange Grove markets.

The bread was from a Balmain bakery, not the one Jonathan wanted because he hadn’t ordered on-line, but excellent bread it was.

Cheese

Mark presented us an excellent English Montgomery Cheddar from Somerset, though some complained that were was “aggressive looking” mould on some pieces, as is it was a “blue”. The Cheddar was presented with a Chutney and the last of the season’s red and black grapes.

The chutney was a commercial brand with a fiery touch to it. It was primarily for the sauce but was also presented with the cheese. 

“Montgomery’s Cheddar is one of just three traditional English cloth-bound cheddars recognized as ‘artisan Somerset cheddar’ by Slow Food. Made on Manor Farm, Cadbury, for over 3 generations. Cheeses are made with milk sourced from the farm’s Friesian-Holstein cows every day to ensure freshness. Drier than most traditional cheddars, flavours are meaty and rich, with savoury/sweet notes.”

Wine

Today we were treated with a brisket “pie” by our chef du jour, Jonathan Casson, with some very excellent Italian wines from the Piedmont district. 

Our Winemaster Nick Reynolds produced some top-flight Nebbiolo, all well aged for our critical assessment. It's hard work, but someone has to do it! 

We got the party started with an aperitif wine for the nibbles. An unusual wine from the King Valley in Vic, a 2024 Schmolzer and Brown, Pret-a-Blanc, blend of Riesling, Pinot Gris, Sav Blanc and Sylvaner. An unusual blend, I have not seen it before. The name translated into English means "ready white", designed for easy drinking at an early age. The wine certainly matched the label, fresh and clean, crisp on the palate, pale yellow colour, and some nice citrus fruits were noticed in the mouthfeel. Clean acidic finish. A very acceptable aperitif wine, helped along by some bottles of two of our best Rieslings, a Leo Buring and Tim Knappstein. Everyone had the first wine, but I'm not sure how many tasted the other two. They were both excellent. 

We then moved on to the main event, a wonderful line-up of Nebbiolo wines, five from Piedmont and one from down here (which was masked).

I do not intend to dissect each wine, as writing in detail about the same grape, six times over, is a real challenge to keep interesting and avoid saying the same thing over and over. So I will limit my dissection to three wines as noted hereunder. Before I do that, I thank our Winemaster for giving us the opportunity to put these wines under the microscope to test if they live up to the lofty title of "the King of wines and the wine of Kings", as Barolo is often named. Let's see if under the harsh glare of 40 members of the WFS, the wine lives up to its reputation. 

Dealing with wine 1, the Barbaresco 2016 14% from Casina Luisin, this to me was a real treat, a wine from an excellent year. I have for some time now preferred the Barbaresco style of Nebbiolo to the Barolo style. Much more approachable, less tannin and less acid, but still retaining that high-class class distinctive flavour of a classic Italian red wine. Elegant but powerful, chewy and seductive, so easy to enjoy, without having to battle the strong tannic and acidity of a Barolo. Drinking beautifully now, but years ahead of fine drinking.

The next wine to catch my attention, wine 4 on the list, was the masked wine, which was eventually revealed as a SC Pannell Nebb from the Adelaide Hills 2013 @ 14%. A much softer wine than the others, perhaps having reached peak maturity, now a 13 yo wine. Medium body, tannin and acid quite restrained, succulent flavours of cherry and plum. 

A very enjoyable wine, perhaps not one to keep for too long, with its acid falling away a bit. 

The third wine for my detailed review was wine 6 on the list, the Ginestra 2010 @ 14%. Now this was a wine that would almost certainly have earned a place at the table of Italian Royalty back in the day. A top year in Piedmont, a real gem, producing some memorable wines, including this one. The wine stood out from all the others by reason of its huge blackness in colour, different from the red brick, ruby colour of the others. Despite its appearance as a real blockbuster, the wine was in perfect balance, elegant, deeply flavoured with dark fruits, cherry, tar and tobacco hints. Tannins, oak and acid all combine to produce a wine of distinction. A powerful lingering finish, I can still taste it! My wine of the day by a country mile. 

With wines 2,3 and 5 the Gabutti and the Marcarini wines, they were in my view a bit of a mixed bag, one or two good, one not so good. They all had that Barolo confrontational presentation of excessive tannin and acidity, which I find off-putting. Anyhow, that's how I see it.

Many thanks to our Winemaster for a very special occasion.