Darren Gall, The Wandering Palate Cambodia correspondent lunches with Julie Thai, proprietor of Phnom Penh restaurant, Le Wok – an incarnation of her Khmer-Chinese and French parentage.
Having lunch with Julie Thai, you come to understand that her restaurant’s ability to seamlessly combine the cultures and cuisines of France and Asia with a simple and understated elegance is an extension of the woman herself and her desire to share the things she loves.
Is there another 1961 equivalent in the offering? Cuisine & Wine Asia’s Contributing Wine Editor Curtis Marsh ponders the latest staggering auction result at Christie’s.
In conversation with an enthusiast at a recent wine dinner, the subject turned to the staggering price that a case of 1961 Paul Jaboulet La Chapelle (rouge) fetched in the latest Christie’s Fine and Rare Wine Auction in London, a whopping GBP123,750 (S$342,000) inclusive of taxes and premiums, setting a new European record for the amount paid for a single case of wine.
The Adelaide Hills vigneron Shaw & Smith celebrate their 20th vintage this year, a significant milestone in the relativity of establishing a vineyard and winery in the new world. This may seem a mere blip to some of the venerable generations-old wineries of Europe.
However, the wine-world is a very different place now and the pioneering spirit and determination to succeed in the extremely competitive and demanding wine industry, establishing a brand from scratch and attaining an enviable international reputation shows both extraordinary creative talent and business acumen. I applaud this family-run partnership between Brothers Mathew and Michael Hill-Smith (M.W.) and Cousin Martin Shaw. Bravo!
Georges Duboeuf sends over 10 different cuvees of Beaujolais Nouveau to Asia brand ambassador Nicolas Olivry at Red and White, who treats us to a sneak preview over lunch on the Eve of the release.
Georges Duboeuf describes the 2009 vintage in the Beaujolais region as “Very good, perhaps too good!” He opines, “It is more of a generous wine in which the grapes have been picked at outstanding level of ripeness producing some hearty, superbly well-balanced wines full of rich, smooth flavours. They have charm and class, smooth and succulent in dark berry flavours; blackcurrants, bilberries and black cherries.”
Rosé skeptics must surely be convinced by now that this is more than a passing fad, with the bourgeoning popularity of rosé and increasingly diverse range of styles with winemakers from divergent regions pursuing worldwide consumer demand.
However, the rose euphoria is being exploited by opportunist (parasitical) wine marketers with a flood of rosé coming on to the market, a large percentage of these wines are made as an afterthought and do the rose movement an injustice. Alas, my choice of “rosé of the year” is intentionally from a region and producer that grows grapes specifically for rose and has been perpetually dedicated to, if not synonymous of this dry style of wine – Provence.
Slow Roasted Medium-Rare Rump of Wagyu Beef. Totally impressive at the table yet absolutely simple to cook!
There is nothing more enticing to a carnivore than a gargantuan piece of beef appearing at the table, juices oozing as it is carved in generous slices, the meat running from shades of cherry red in the centre to a caramelized roasted–brown outside.
No longer delimited to the Loire Valley, France or Marlborough, New Zealand, almost the entire wine-world is now producing Sauvignon Blanc and the whole world is willingly drinking it. Curtis Marsh comes out of the closet in defence of this greatly maligned variety.
Since early Roman times, the wider popularity of grape varieties has been largely determined by its ability to travel or adapt to new environments and, above all, fashion. Achieving global massconsumer appeal for any grape variety in this day and age has long been a very tight clique, namely Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon.
Originally intended to be part of my larger project “Australia Benchmark Chardonnay Producers” I am sure readers will not mind if I include chardonnay’s soul mate, pinot noir in this coverage of new releases from Sugarloaf Ridge. The 2007 Sugarloaf Ridge Chardonnay is indeed a blinder, nothing short of exemplary and in my view, the benchmark for Tasmania.
In the late 1950’s Jean Miguet at La Provence, east of Launceston and Claudio Alcorso at Morilla Estate near Hobart, pioneered the renaissance of Tasmanian wine industry. The late 1960’s and 70’s saw the establishment of Graham Wiltshire’s Heemskerk vineyard on the Tamar, followed by Andrew Pirie at Pipers Brook, north of Launceston and Freycinet Vineyard on the Eastcoast in the early 80’s; the suitability and reputation of chardonnay in the cool-climate of Tasmania was slowly chiselled.
Somewhat paradoxically, ever since I left Australia for Asia eight years ago, I have been in search of, if not craving, the innovative contemporary Thai-influenced food of David Thompson (Darley Street Thai, Sailor Thai, Nahm) and his one of his star apprentices, Martin Boetz of Longrain.
Despite Thompson being Boetz’s mentor, their interpretations of Thai cuisine are poles apart; Thompson the archaeologist of the countries cuisine, authoring the tomb “Thai Food” (published by Pavilion), surely the most comprehensive and authoritative cookbook on the subject ever written, yet Thompson pushes all boundaries in Thai cuisine in his idiosyncratic style although retaining a nucleus of tradition and the utmost respect for the core ingredients of Thailand.
Many colleagues today bemoan that we are losing our true winemaking artisans to a kind of oenological ‘industrial revolution’, where wines are made in labs, by recipe, to satisfy ‘target consumers’, ‘market profiles’ and ‘Wine Critics’ (gate-keepers as they are referred to by trade insiders). The result being that all we may end up with is a universal mouth-wash so bland and boring as to inspire epitaphs instead of poetry.
