The Dream of a Vineyard, The Nightmare of the Reality

Every office worker dreams it.  I am sure of it, not that I have ever worked in an office.  But the dream of "chucking it all in" and heading of for a tree change and plunging into the world of living off the land is very alluring.

Of course the dream of fleeing the office-scape for a vineyard is all to enticing.  Who would not want to wake up every morning, looking out over their sea of vines.  Spend a bit of the day in the vineyard, chat with guests in the cellardoor, an agrarian lunch on the patio, a siesta, then playing in the winery in the afternoon.  Maybe some friends over for dinner with a bottle of the 2001 vintage from the cellar, such a great year.

Sorry folks, it ain't like that.

First off, it is agriculture. The seasons play havoc, plans never stick, too little rain and you struggle, too much rain can destroy you.

Then, you have to sell it. This seems to be put way back in the minds of a lot of small producers. It reminds me of a 1989 movie with Kevin Costner, Field of Dreams. The main punch line of this movie is "build it and he will come". Kevin builds himself a baseball field and people flock to his door.

Well it does not work this way for a small producer. You don't just make a wine and then it sells. People will not "just come". It takes a lot of hard work and marketing to be successful in selling wine.

And this week on the show I have spoken to 2 young winemakers Paul and Gilli, full of optimism and punch.  They have recently bought a vineyard and are renovating it with the aim of producing their own wine.  After a year they understand how hard it is, how high the highs can be and how heart wrenching the lows can be.  And with Paul's marketing background I hope they succeed and don't fall into the traps others have.

Here is the audio:

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Roast Chook, RÖMERTOPF®

RÖMERTOPF... Hmmm, you say.  Well it was cool when I was a little tacker, I think.  It was cool before the Tagine was cool.  It is way cool.


It is a German clay pot for cooking in the oven, and it has no vent like the tagine so all the moisture stays in.  We found ours at the op shop (steal!) and have used it to great success quite a few times.


Normally for a roast chook we follow Stephanie Alexanders method in the bible (The Cook's Companion), 160°C for 1h20m rotating every 20 min with butter and lemon up the bum.  A great method and fantastic results.


But this week we used the RÖMERTOPF.  


Recipe

• Soak RÖMERTOPF in cold water for 10 minutes minimum

• Pat dry chook (We recommend Nichols)

• Place in RÖMERTOPF on top of baby potatoes (and any other roast vegies you like)
• Baste outside of chook with ginger, salt, pepper, olive oil

• Place into COLD oven and turn oven on to 160°C
• It should cook in 1.5-2 hours (depending on the heating time of the oven, everyone is different)

Serve with the roast vegies and steamed garden greens, enjoy.

Whisky/Whiskey

Whisky, or is it Whiskey?  I can never remember the difference.  And reading Wikipedia only makes it more confusing:

The spelling whisky (plural: whiskies) is generally used in Canada, Japan, Scotland, and Wales, while whiskey (plural: whiskeys) is more common in Ireland and the United States. However, the usage is not always consistent – for example, some prominent American brands, such as George Dickel, Maker's Mark, and Old Forester (which are all made by different companies), use the 'whisky' spelling on their labels, and the U.S. legal Standards of Identity for Distilled Spirits document also uses the 'whisky' spelling. American brands using the Scottish version of the spelling of “whisky” tend to have been founded by individuals with Scottish ancestry or to have a flavour, style or marketing strategy that is evocative of Scotch whisky.

From here on I will use Whisky, it will save me one keystroke.

Whisky is made by first of all fermenting a grain (barley, rye, malted or un-malted) which is very similar to another process, beer.  This alcoholic liquid (beer?) is then distilled a couple of times to get it up to cask strength, 63-72% alcohol.  This is then stored in casks for a period of time prior to bottling.  Simple hey.

So I know little about this art and thought I should get someone into the studio who knew a lot more about it than me.  Enter Bill Lark.

He has been making distilled spirits in Tasmania at Lark Distillery for quite a while.  In fact he was the first distillery in Tasmania for 150 years, and had to battle federal laws to get it up and running.  Fascinating story, I had a great time, thanks Bill.

Here is the audio:

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That WET Debate, Rebate, Part 2.0

The Rebate is not Married to the Tax

You may have or not read my previous post on the Wine Equalisation Tax and may agree or disagree with my view that the small winemaker will not be affected much by changing the tax on wine from Ad Valorem to Volumetric.

After chatting with many boutique operators I always get the same response:

"But if the WET goes I won't get my rebate"

I want to analyse this phrase and break it down in to what we are talking about.  There are actually 2 separate parts to the current wine tax system, but for some reason they have become "married".  They are:

1. A tax on wine. Currently a Wine Equalisation Tax (WET) of 29% then GST of 10%
2. A rebate.  For the first $1,000,000 of sales you get the WET tax back

How does changing the Tax change the Rebate?  The fear is that "if the Government change the tax system, it will all go".  Maybe, but what if it doesn't.  Why can't the tax system look like this:

1. A tax on wine. Volumetric tax at the rate of $0.16 per standard drink
2. A rebate.  For the first $1,000,000 of sales you get the Volumetric tax back

I would love to see the divorce of the thinking that to "have a rebate you have to have a WET". And with this new system, every small winemaker (below $1,000,000 of sales) would pay exactly the same rate of tax, the GST 10%.  

It is right for the wine industry to have a tax rate based on the volume of alcohol, as it can be such a damaging drug in the wrong hands.  I want this debate to continue.

Thoughts?

Charcuterie, fancy word, great food

Charcuterie.


You may not have heard of the word, but you certainly know its work.  Wikipedia defines it as "the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products such as bacon, ham, sausage, terrines, galantines, pâtés, and confit, primarily from pork."  O Yes!  As Homer Simpson once said about all those meats coming from one mythical, magical animal:

Charcuterie was a great way to preserve meat before refrigeration, now it's an awesome way to produce great flavours.  I have dabbled a little bit into the black arts, and have been duly rewarded.  My first challenge was to make fresh Toulouse Sausage and cook them up that night. Sweet!  The next challenge was to cure some meat. I broke down a whole duck, legs for Duck Rillettes and breast for Duck Prosciutto.  Fantastic, I am sold, just need to learn a bit more.


Last night I had a great chat on the radio with Ross O'Meara.  He was a former chef but now has his own farm on Bruny Island, raising all sorts of animals.  And he turns them into beautiful products and sells them through his label started with Matthew Evans, Rare Food. 

I loved hearing about how he raises and creates his own charcuterie.  In particular, how you can use all the pig for all different types of meats, ham from shoulder, pork belly makes bacon or sausages, the sausage casings can come from the intestine, hocks for a ragu, etc, etc, etcetera.  Nose to tail.  Here is the interview:

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And I will leave you with some youtube joy, Ross and Matthew making Toulouse Sausages for the Gourmet Farmer series.

Dr Don Martin Sustainable Viticulture Scholarship

So..

The $10,000 Don Martin Sustainable Viticulture Fellowship was initiated to commemorate influential Tasmanian viticulturist, Dr Don Martin. The Fellowship is available to Tasmanian-based practicing professionals working in Tasmania's wine sector to encourage research across viticulture / oenology. Its intent is to provide an individual with the opportunity to undertake national or international travel for study or practical activities that will benefit the Tasmanian wine sector through innovation, sustainability and best practice.

The Fellowship was possible through a generous bequest from Dr Martin to the Alcorso Foundation, a great friend of Claudio Alcorso both of them sharing a passion about improving wine grapes grown in Tasmania.  Through this fellowship Dr Martin's bequest provides valuable opportunity for individuals in the Tasmanian wine sector to explore leading sustainable practices outside Tasmania and share that knowledge for the benefit of the broader Tasmanian wine sector.

And the inaugural winner is ... me.

So the proposal that I have put forward is that I will:

• Attend the workshop “The Biocontrol of Plant Disease” hosted by the International Organisation for Biological Control. This will be in Reims, France, 25-27 June 2012
• Complete 2 -3 stagiares with producers from Burgundy and Alsace. Each placement would be of 1 - 2 weeks duration.  

It is a great opportunity for me and an honour to be an ambassador for the Tasmanian wine industry.


I was presented this award by the Premier of Tasmania, Lara Giddings, at the annual Alcorso Foundation Dinner.  And boy what a dinner it was, with guest Chef Nicolas Poelaert of Melbourne's famed Embrasse.  Here is the menu:


Lightly steamed Tasmanian salmon, smoked olive, nettle juice, old way pickles, cereal bread

Braised beef cheeks in ink, burnt carrot puree, asparagus, rice vinegar, pomme croquete

Praline mousse, desiree potato, nougatine, sheep's milk yoghurt, banana 

And desert was amazing, it was plated at the bar.  Before I tell you what it was, here is the sequence photos.

And the desert was simply called Embrasse Restaurant forest floor

Here is a copy of my thank you speech:

I would first of all like to thank the sponsors Wine Tasmania, Plasdene GlassPak and the Wine Business Magazine for their generous support.  Without support of organisations like these, awards like this cannot take place.

I would like to thank the Premier for presenting this award.  The Tasmanian Wine Industry is in a unique position, with demand outstripping supply, and amazingly high quality.  With the Governments continued support the Tasmanian Wine Industry can be truly cemented as one of Australia’s great wine regions.

I would also like to thank the Alcorso Foundation for this scholarship.  It is a huge opportunity for me and I understand that it comes with a huge responsibility that I will dutifully uphold.

Thank you goes also to my 2 referees, my boss Greg Melick, and my uncle Dr Richard Smart.  I don’t know what you said in the application about me, but it must have worked.

But my biggest thank you goes to my wife, Greer Carland.  You are my muse.

Thank you

May the Peas be With You

Now is a great time to be planting peas.  We are planting ours in the "legume" section of our rotating vegie garden.  We grow our seeds up in paper pots.

The trellising we use is galvanised square mesh with star pickets holding it up.  Each one is about 1.8m tall and 1.2m wide, stacked about 30cm apart.  I hope enough sunlight gets in between.  We used these trellises for tomatoes last year and they are awesome.

The paper pots make transplanting obsolete.  You can plant the whole pot and plant straight in the ground.

The variety of pea is Greenfeast.  We are definitely hoping for a feast of green peas from this lot, 30 odd plants.

These peas lined up for battle remind me of the theme song to the Imperial Stormtroopers.

And here for fun is some floppy disk drives playing that theme.

The State of the Tasmanian Wine Industry

On tonight's Booze an Nosh show we chatted with Sheralee Davies of Wine Tasmania and Dr Bob Dambergs of the AWRI's Tasmania cluster.  It was a great chat about where the industry is at and the direction it is heading.  I am really luck that I make wine in this state as we are in a great shape.  When other regions are facing low demand/high supply problems we seemed to be blessed with the flip side of the coin.  As a region that produces only half a percent of the national crush, we seem to keep batting well above our weight division.

But where is the future?  Will our success bring massive amounts of investment with expansive plantings, driving growers premium prices down?  Or will sensitive investment bring an opportunity to reach more customers at lower price points?

I think the time is right for starting the discussion, about where the future of the Tasmanian wine industry should aim for.

Audio of the show here

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Scallops and Asparagus

Well Aspara-lanche keeps on keeping on.  It was Friday night and we wanted something easy but yummy to cook.  And Scallop season in TasVegas is open but they are in short supply, so get in quick.  We have adapted a recipe from Charmaine Solomon's bible "The Complete Asian Cookbook", Scallops with Snow Peas.

Our Recipe - Scallops with Asparagus

Serves 2
250g Scallops, washed and dried
2 Leeks, cut into thin slices and washed very well
1 bunch of Asparagus, hard end snapped off, then halved
2 tbsp Peanut Oil
1 tsp Ginger, finely grated
2 tsp Cornflour
1/4 cup Water
1 tsp Light Soy Sauce
1/2 tsp Salt

Heat oil in wok and fry leeks and ginger for 1 mintue.  Add scallops and fry for 1 minute.  Add asparagus and fry for 1 minute.  Push to the side of the and add cornflour mixed with cold water and soy sauce and stir till thickened.  Stir in scallops and vegetables, sprinkle with salt and serve immediately.

Enjoy

First Weekend Garden Club - October

Spring is truly here today. We spent an awesome day gardening and I thought a great way to share it would be to upload photos from the garden.  Hey that's new, nobody has done that before.

Well lets do something different.  Lets start up the "First Weekend Garden Club".  Write a post and put up your favourite 5 garden photos taken on the first weekend of every month.  A great way to document your garden, and see what everyone else is up to.  We can link it with twitter hash tag #1stWeekendGardenClub.

My Post

October

Fat Bastard Asparagus

Garlic Grove

Tomato Bed, pre planting, post cover crop

Apple Blossom

Pear Blossom

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