Canberra Offline.

[TravisW]

Right, who's keen for a Canberra offline. No firm ideas as yet (and not putting myself up for anything ) just putting feelers out for who might be keen, and to see who lives in this neck-of-the-'hood.

Cheers, Travis.

[pstarr]

Happy to do something. A few CBR wine folk have some good spots to go to for casual or less-casual offlines.

[redstuff]

Wish i could come I miss the Capital Tasters.

[The fish]

Count me in. Happy to contribute.

There's a few others floating around - I'm sure that they'll surface when they're back in town.

Cheers
Matt

[Duncan Disorderly]

I'm keen...

Cheers
Julian

[pstarr]

Righto. How about next Thursday evening (16th January) at the Beijing House Restaurant at Hawker? I can bring some glassware.

Everybody bring a bottle?

[The fish]

Can do.

That's the dumpling place? What are you thinking of bringing?

Can bring a spatlese or two. Possibly another option but will need to check what's in the cellar

Kick off tIme?

Dan_smee, dlo? Are you in town ATM ? Care to join us?
Cheers
Matt

[pstarr]

Yep, does good, hand-made dumplings. Tammy and I might bring bubbles (white & red). I guess a 7:30pm booking?

[dan_smee]

Sounds great all, but I can't make this coming Thursday. Really good to start something up though, and would be very keen in future

[TravisW]

I'm pretty sure I'm OK for this. I'll confirm over the weekend.

I've got a few old Rieslings which should do the trick.

Cheers, Travis.

[The fish]

Good for 7.30 but can be flexible if need be. Looking forward to having a few wines with like minded others.

Currently talking to a contact about getting some aged Vouvray just for a bit of fun. It may not make it with the delivery timeframe so we'll see how we go with that one.

Cheers
Matt

[TravisW]

I'm in. Probably bring an aged Riesling.

See you there.

Cheers, Travis.

[pstarr]

So it's looking like The Fish, Duncan, Travis (plus 1s?), Tammy and myself for Thursday?

I'll sort out a booking when I have final numbers. Will go for 7:30pm.

[TravisW]

Alas just me this Thursday as my wife can't make it.

Cheers, Travis.

[Duncan Disorderly]

I'm in and will bring the better half. I have a bottle 2002 Clare riesling which should do the trick.

[dlo]

I'm in.

Seeing nobody's mentioned a red, I'll bring a slightly chilled magnum and six decent red glasses. Looking forward to meeting everyone and catching up with Paul and Tammy again after a long hiatus

[dlo]

Sounds great all, but I can't make this coming Thursday. Really good to start something up though, and would be very keen in future

Sorry you can't make it Dan. Perhaps next time.

We had jazz muso's visiting from Melbourne tonight and we opened a 1999 Tyrrell's HVD Reserve .... a glorious bottle of mature Hunter sem .... and a totally different animal to the otherworldly Vat 1 from the same year. Might be my last bottle, too, and probably a very good time to polish it off. And the 1998 Orlando St Hugo Coonawarra Cabernet that followed was equally impressive. This wine possesses a lengthy, quite distinguished drinking window. 6 bottles left in the cellar.

[The fish]

Looks like we have the makings of a good crowd

See you then!

Cheers
Matt

[pstarr]

Righto. I've booked the Beijing House, Hawker, for a group of 8 at 7:30 this Thursday night. Tammy and I will bring bubbles and some glasses.

The booking is under the name of 'Paul'. See you there.

[pstarr]

What a good night. Reminds me of why I like good offlines - new people, a relaxed vibe, good food, chats, laughs, fine wines. And a touch over $30 each. The venue was the Beijing House restaurant in Hawker.

The wines (no duds here):
- 2001 Courabyra Wines sparkling, Tumbarumba. Lester Jesberg has called this the best Australian sparkling wine he's seen. Not sure about that, but jeez it's good. Maybe at it's peak, this is an aged-release, long time on lees, sparkling from Tumbarumba. Blending chardonnonay, pinot noir and meunier, this has an excellent balance of freshness and aged character. Brightness, length, toast. So good. Close to WOTN for me. The aperitif.
- 2010 Willi Schaeffer Kabinett riesling. I loved the fresh fruit, sugar, acid balance of this wine. Really good with the red rice vinegar sauce and fish dumplings. Delicious.
- 2002 Leasingham Clare Valley riesling. Developed colour, fine lick of Bickfords lime, just enough kero, length aplenty but still a fresh-acid brightness. Tasty example of the excellent 2002 Clare riesling vintage. Still some years ahead of it, but fine drinking now. Handled the pan-fried beef dumplings and steamed vegetarian dumplings well.
- 1994 Leasingham Classic Clare sparkling shiraz. Served with a course of crispy-skin duck pancakes, this was a fine fit with the hoi sin and salt-duck flavours and textures. At peak age for me. Serious development of colour and equivalent leather, aged-fruit and gently-truffled developed notes. So long. Not a lot of fizz, but enough to carry along the palate. Acid to cut the hoi sin, plus savoury and aged characters to butt against the duck. Held well into the spicy, twice-cooked Szechuan pork dish too. My WOTN.
- 2007 Grosset riesling. I think this was the Watervale bottling. Has picked up a fair bit of colour already. Clearly an aged riesling, but still with some fruit and acid freshness about it. Went really well with a Cantonese-style dish of white fish, ginger and spring onions. Had an interesting, moreish, savoury note about it. Drink sooner rather than later. Good with squid in spicy salt as well.
- 1990 Lindemans Coonawarra cabernet sauvignon. From magnum. The barest touch of shiraz (1%) in this. Such a fine example of lower-alcohol, aged Coonawarra goodness. Such elegant, even development. Resolved fruit and tannin, all the way along the palate. Bright acid, as you'd expect from something under 13% abv. Still some freshness, along with the upholstery. A fine foil for a savoury, vegetal, dish of beef and stir-fried vegetables. Really good with the sweetness of a mandarin pork dish.

Good to have caught up with dlo again, and met a heap of new Canberra Auswine people. We did the Summer of Riesling proud, already.

[TravisW]

Thanks for booking tonight Paul. Lovely, delicate food to go with the wines.

I love Canberra for these nights. You could walk right past the front door of this restaurant and it would look bog-standard. But inside is another world. Great food, new friends and some terrific wines.

WOTN for me was the Tumba-bloody-rumba sparkling. Refined, powerful and incredibly moreish. The nose just got better and better in the glass.

My wine, the Grosset Watervale 2007, was a touch between to phases. It had lost it's youthful zip, and wasn't quite into its's aged characters. Nice, but not quite.

My eyes are heavy and my first patient tomorrow is at 7:45AM, so it's off to bed.

Cheers Canberra Winos.

Travis.

[Duncan Disorderly]

Thanks to all involved for a great evening, and particularly to Paul for organising the venue and the notes above.

Like Travis I agree that the Courabyra 805 sparkling was WOTN, but all wines were good and interesting to try (and I still managed to drive home and go riding this morning).

Look forward to next time and suggest the Burgundian varieties of Pinot Noir and/or Gamay and Chardonnay as a possible theme.

Cheers

Julian

PS Canberra Winos indeed.

[TravisW]

We must be able to think of a good pun cobbling together wine/Canberra/politics.

Answers on the back of a postcard please.

[The fish]

That was a really good way to spend a stinking hot Canberra evening - I really enjoyed it.

Paul that was a first-class restaurant choice. Thanks for kicking off the offline for us. Top notch cantonese and sezchuan-style food in a casual setting. Who would have thought there was such a gem hidden in the non-descript Hawker shops?

I'm up for the Courabuyra as the WOTN too. It had a really nice, almost autolysed character to it and it's easy to see why it's collecting accolades all over the place. A great start to the night.

I thought the Willi Schaefer, with it's sweet fruited approach, provided a point of difference to the Australian rieslings. Went well with the dumplings and I reckon it would be an interesting proposition with a bit of age on it.

Really liked both the Australian rieslings. The 2002 Leasingham riesing will be with us for a little while yet - well balanced - however not sure it will improve further. The Grosset, although showing a touch of advanced development through colour change, had a savoury note that held my interest. Both went well with their respective dishes.

The Sparkling Shiraz: had a really nice mouth feel. Linear acid. I think I need to start putting some of these away.

The Lindemans cab sav held true to form - a sterling wine with it's tannins pretty much fully resolved. On a cold canberra night and with a different menu this might have got more votes for WOTN from the crowd. Thanks to Dlo for your generosity with this bottle.

It was good to finally put a few faces to the names at the table. Looking forward to doing it again soon. Any thoughts on the next venue to go with the proposed theme? My cellar looks good for pinot and gamay (beaujolais okay?) but I'm going to need to be convinced of the merits of chardonnay - ther were too many 'can you taste the metal tank?' experiences in my formative drinking years...

Cheers
Matt

[dlo]

Sorry for not responding earlier but I have been flat out preparing for my next tour of Victoria early in Feb. Seeing I spend four days playing at Hall's Gap, I purposefully held off doing charts for three of the four bands I'm in until the bushfire danger passed. That chore is now complete.

This was a very good night of fine food and wine in relaxed ambience with good companionship. I liked Paul's sparkling a lot. From Tumbarumba, it has spent an inordinate amount of time on lees (since 2001). The colour was a light gold displaying excellent brightness and blessed with a persistent fine bead. Revealing a decidedly complex and thrilling bouquet of melon and strawberry with classy brioche, browned toast and developed autolysis character followed by a richly flavoured, acid rich palate of excellent weight, this outstanding sparkler delivered the requisite crispness and depth/length of finish to deserve an outstanding rating from me.

The Riesling's were very good to outstanding. I enjoyed the Grosset 2007 but found it a touch advanced for its age and somewhat phenolic. I consider the 2002 Leasingham Bin7 a very good example with some petrol left in the tank. The Willi Schaeffer Kabinet was a corker and has an excellent future. The sheer balance of the wine merits an outstanding rating. The old sparkling shiraz from Leasingham was excellent but was a better wine when fresher some years back, IIRC (I drank several bottles of this favourite until the late naughties). The magnum of Lindemans Sesquicentenary Cabernet Sauvignon (9% Shiraz) was a delightfully mature, smooth and fully resolved number that drank beautifully in every respect.

Wonderful how well everyone got along. Looking forward to February already.

[pstarr]

Pulp Kitchen at Ainslie might be a good option for a February offline, with Matt's suggested pinot/gamay/chardonnay theme. Food that will fit those varieties. Sensible approach to BYO too. Maybe each person brings a bottle, aiming for an even split across those varieties, Matt?

Might be an idea to start another thread, I guess.

[TravisW]

Or should we keep this thread going so that we can look back in years to come at EVERY single bottle of wine we have shared? Much easier than searching the Forum.

What do you think?

Hmm, Gamay. Haven't had much of that since moving home from the UK. Mr Carrington kindly shared a bottle of Bass Philips with us while he was out here watching his cricket team get MJ-ed. Rather nice it was... so was the wine.

Cheers, Travis.

PS: Pulp Kitchen sounds great.

[The fish]

...Duncan (Julian) should get the credit for the theme:) I think he's a closet Chardonnay drinker...

Sounds like a plan. Open to Pulp - has anyone had any recent experiences? What's the ambience like for groups? What's the menu like these days or do we want to have a conversation with them to see if they can do something for us?

I have next to zero Chardonnay in the cellar. However I might see if there's any new pattes Loup available. I'm happy to look at what I've got in terms of Beaujolais (have some longer term gear) burgundy (might be vinfanticide though) and Aussie Pinot (bits and pieces - might be some decent vintages of by Farr but need to check). Do you guys have any preferences? Happy to fit in where the gaps are if need be.

Side-bar: was reading Travis' post about the cricket. Read the bit about 'MJ' and immediately read it as the English team had been "Michael Jacksoned". I guess it means the same thing really:) nice work!

Have we settled on a name yet?

Cheers
Matt aka the fish

[dan_smee]

If someone wants to email me a list of attendees, I am happy to keep a master register of attendees, bottles and events so we can have a quick reference guide to what each person experienced?

[Mark Carrington]

Or should we keep this thread going so that we can look back in years to come at EVERY single bottle of wine we have shared? Much easier than searching the Forum.

What do you think?

Hmm, Gamay. Haven't had much of that since moving home from the UK. Mr Carrington kindly shared a bottle of Bass Philips with us while he was out here watching his cricket team get MJ-ed. Rather nice it was... so was the wine.

Cheers, Travis.
.

Steadyyyy, Mr. Webb.
Please to see you resisted taking along some Primo Joseph Sparkling!