Wine labels - rant

When you go out to buy a bottle of wine there are a few basics you look for - other than price. The list of must-haves typically includes brand/name, style, year, grape/s and region/origin, not necessarily in that order. Now usually all these items are there, somewhere - if you look hard enough. And that is my point: there is an increasing tendency to create labels that are incomprehensible and/or illegible (especially to visually-challenged wearers of specs, like myself.)

 

Seems like every time a new vintage is released the first priority is to fiddle with the tried and true old label. This is mostly effected by lazy, wet behind the ears brand managers/marketers suffering from emperor's new clothes syndrome. You know the ones. They're always banging on about generation-X, gender-targeting, price points, market niches, demographics, points of difference and so on. Problem is they never visit a retail outlet. If they did they'd see consumers peering confusedly at the shelves, either not recognising their old favourites or completely baffled by ponced up new packaging.

 

Especially offensive is what I call the "installation" label, a riot of fonts, font sizes, colours (puce on heliotrope?), pasted over an arte moderne abstraction which looks like it's been designed by a precocious kindergarten inmate afflicted with mild dyslexia and moderate colour-blindness. I refuse to buy them.

 

As for back labels...mostly flights of fantasy induced by too many sucks on the sauce bottle...but more on that later.

 

Food-processor flourless citrus cake with liqueur cream

Really simple:

 

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C

Cake: 2 medium-sized oranges, 1 small lemon or lime and 1 small mandarin. 1 generous cup almond meal mixed with 1 generous teaspoon baking powder and 1 cup raw or soft brown sugar. 6 lightly beaten, largish (60grams-ish) free-range eggs. 1 well-buttered spring-form cheesecake baking pan.

Cream: 1 cup pure double cream beaten with 2-3 tablespoons of Drambuie or limoncello.

 

Barely cover fruit (skins and all) with water, bring to boil and simmer for 1 hour - or, steam in pressure cooker on trivet for 15 minutes. Drain fruit and when cooled a little cut into quarters and remove gross hunks of pith and obvious pips. Whizz fruit briefly in food processor, add almond meal/sugar mixture then eggs until a slightly liquid batter forms. Pour into pan and cook on low shelf in oven for 1 hour or until top is well -browned.

 

Serve cold, dolloped with the liqueur cream to taste. Accompany with the substantial Yalumba (wooded) Eden Valley Viognier 2000.

 

You want oak? - We've got oak!

From the Windy Ridge Winery newsletter: "The 1998 Windy Ridge sOAKin Pinot Noir contains a piece of oak 5cm x 1cm x 1cm. The 1998 Windy Ridge sOAKin Cabernet Sauvignon & Malbec contains a piece of oak 6cm x 1cm x 1cm. Our trials suggest that these quantities of French oak will progressively render the wines 'very oaky' through 2002. Thereafter, we expect the oak flavours and tannic grip to slowly soften and integrate, producing wines of greater complexity than our regular 1998 red wines".

 

Modern manners

Overheard this guy discussing the lifestyle of his 14 year old daughter. 'We take her to all the top restaurants, Circa, Fenix, Radii and so on. She's got a good palate, knows what she likes, can talk knowledgeably about wine and food matching. It costs us a fortune.'

 

'Why?' asked his mate.

 

'So's when she meets an 18 year old spotty faced hoon with tattoos, spiky hair and a nose ring, whose idea of a night out is a Big Mac, a can of Red Bull and vodka and a session in the back of a clapped-out Holden panel van at the drive-in, she'll tell him to get stuffed!'

 

Wine writing of another era

'In the Clos du Roi [1904] the expert nose could catch a subtle hint of that evasive violet fragrance which belongs to an old Corton. Its liquid velvet, more silky than a pretty girl's cheek, softer, in Theocritean phrase, than sleep, caressed tongue and palate with an ecstasy of "linked sweetness drawn out", leaving behind in the throat the warmth, the freshness and the lingering perfume which are the properties of true finesse.' H. Warner Allen, The Romance of Wine, Ernest Benn Limited, London 1931.

 

Espresso economics - How much for a gross cup of coffee?

Ingrid Svendsen wrote an interesting piece about Melbourne' s coffee pioneers in last week's Melbourne Times. She mentioned one café owner who churns out espressos and lattes to the equivalent of over 60 kilos of coffee beans a week. This prompted me to get out the Palm Abacus and do a few quick sums on the economics of espresso sales.

 

Take one Gaggia money-making machine. Buy one kilo of good coffee beans at a wholesale price of say, $20 (but probably less on average). For each cup you'll use a typical seven gram measure of ground beans to get around 140 serves per kilo. Now, if a short black sells at say, $2.50, your gross income from one kilo of beans will be $350, and at $3 per cup, $420. A café using 60 kilos per week at $2.50 the cup will gross $21,000 and a $3 cup will generate a healthy $25,200! Can't understand why I don't own a café.

 

Feedback

Gary of Footscray writes, Martin, When I've prepared a dinner for friends and chosen wine to match the food what do I say to a guest who brings a wine that doesn't fit into the menu but that he obviously wants to open?

 

An age-old problem Gary. You have a number of options. Choose the most appropriate course and use both your wine and his to accompany it - this will please the guest. Or, explain your food/wine matching exercise and ask the guest to bring the wine another time for a less formal occasion. Or, take the wine, write the guest's name on it and say you'll open it next time he comes around. Or, if it's a really good bottle take it, put it away and never mention it again - this will really piss him off and he'll never bring another bottle - you may never hear from him again either.

 

On the other hand, when you are the guest and return the serve by taking a bottle to your friend's house, try these techniques. Open the bottle at home, lightly re-cork it and when offering it to your host explain thus, 'The cork looked a little dodgy so I extracted it just in case, happily it's okay. Hand me a glass and I'll pour us a taste.' Or, 'The winemaker told me that this red needs to breathe for half an hour before drinking. Got a corkscrew handy? I'll leave the bottle on the sideboard until we eat.' Or, if the bottle seems to have disappeared into the hosts' cellar, 'Where's that bottle I brought? Is it in the kitchen? I've just gotta show you the insane waffle on the back label. Is this the corkscrew drawer?'