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Grand Vintage 2010; Sydney Delivers – by Brad Hickey

Posted by Brad - 03/10/10 at 03:03:11 pm

We are settling into what looks to be a grand vintage in McLaren Vale. The Gods have cooperated and kept the extreme heat at bay. Thorpe Wines has picked all the fruit off its “Pelion Block” and it looks healthy, fresh, and delicious. However, many growers here are hurting, and looking for somebody, anybody, to buy their fruit. Contracts aren’t worth the paper they are written on, and $300 per ton is not an uncommon figure, where the district average was once over $1000. Rumor has it that next year will be even more brutal with many a grower leaving more fruit on their vines, since there’s no point in picking something you can’t sell. Recently there was a suicide up the hill by a grower that was feeling the pinch. One never knows the ins and outs of these tragic actions, but we hope that it isn’t to be a recurring theme. Farmer suicides due to the drought inland have become a major worry, and I have never seen anything like it. I do live in a beautiful, albeit harsh, country.

We trod on, and sometimes try to celebrate the harvest. A harvest lunch at Alpha Box and Dice winery with wine educator Gill Gordon-Smith tasting Italian varietals helps distract us. This lunch/tasting was the first of three on offer this season; check with her bottle shop in the Vale, Fall From Grace, for more info. It’s a great chance to try some fantastic European wines matched against their Australian counterparts. Her superb and relatively new wine shop on the Main Street in McLaren Vale focuses on European wines from thoughtful, small producers and is offering tastings and all sorts of educational activities. It has become a great reference point for local winemakers and winelovers alike. And for me it is like being back in NYC again, since many of the wines Gill sells are impossible to find in Oz and were stalwarts on the winelists in places where I once worked.

There is a nice rhythm to the vintage this year, according to our viticulturist, Peter Bolte, unlike last years all at once blitz due to the heatwave pounding on the fruit. Thorpe’s winemaker, Tim Geddes, is crushing fruit now like nobody’s business, as is par for the course, but fortunately it’s coming in waves. Unlike the last few years when it was all over the place, or all at once, this year has a steady calm to it. Thorpe Sign The subregions around the Vale are harvesting in a timely fashion. As I get to know this terrain, it’s interesting to watch how different districts perform.
One thing for sure is that the harvesters and semis loaded with grapes are working thru the night now. Transport specialists, like Sully here, are kicking long hours to get the juice moved from point A to point B. Of course, he always has time for a quick ale after work when pressed.

A quick junket to Sydney took me to 3 of the cities best spots: Quai, Est, and The Bentley. I’m still wondering how I made it home in one piece. Great rooms, superb sommeliers, and really nice food. The Bentley is chef Brent Savage and Nick Hildebrandt’s place and it just opened after a 6 week renovation. It is also home to ‘wunderkind’ Glen Goodwin, who keeps a low profile here. Glen ran the wine program at WD50 and worked on the all-star wine crew at Cru Restaurant in NYC for years before returning to Sydney to surf, readjust to a sense of normalcy, and marry his American sweetheart. The Bentley is the kind of place you want to go to all the time. In fact, it is where the sommeliers from Quai and Est go on their nights off. Enough said. Sit at the bar, pick thru the genius international list, and be served.

Food culture in Sydney is advancing at a fast clip. For the first time I met real talent in the restaurants I ate in. Ironically, most sommeliers here dream of going to NYC and doing the hard yards in the “center of the universe”. If only I could warn them; it doesn’t get much better than balmy Sydney, guys. Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one. Granted, NYC is the greatest city in the world, so I can see where they are coming from.

“It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts… For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.” Patrick Henry, US Lawyer and Patriot (1736-1799)