il mensile - October 2024

Written for Giorgio de Maria Fun Wines.

This month Aaron Ayscough of Not Drinking Poison told the story of big brands making good in a small pond. That small pond, of course, is the natural wine world, the big brands are Les Vins Pirouette and Pepin, both linked to Duo Oneologie. The criticism is as much about their fit within the philosophy of natural wine as it is about the negative connotations of going big (and the potential slackening of morals to come with that growth, a la Uber et cetera, et cetera).

“Depending on how you look at it, the fast growth of Pépin - and to a far lesser extent, Les Vins Pirouettes - represents either a Trojan horse aiding natural wine to penetrate new markets, or a Trojan horse aiding large organic estates with no fealty to the ethics of natural wine to penetrate natural wine markets, all while ceding greater portions of profit to enologists, investors, and marketers,” says Aascough. 

I’m not adverse to a little argy bargy – especially about what does or does not conform to the philosophy around these wines. I find the lofty environmental and philosophical standards people are held to rather refreshing. I also tend to think these semantics are part of the fun in drinking and discussing these wines.

The story accompanies a flurry of subscriber-only interviews from part 1 of Ayscough’s Alsatian series, including interviews with Pierre Dietrich of Pepin (“When you drink a Pépin blanc, you know it’s necessarily organic, harvested by hand, not yeasted, no additives, and it’s not sulfited … If you’re convinced by natural wine, that everything should go into organics, that you want no more glyphosate in the vines … I don’t understand why you’re not for the democratization [of natural wine].”), and a good deep dive into the world of oenology with Xavier Couturier of Duo (“At the start [2008], the true questions were very individual … today … everyone has the same problem, which is how do we manage to finish the sugars and win against the bacteria. And it’s global warming. That’s the principal worry.”), there are also interviews with a number of winemakers in the region and their read on the topic. A cracker.

Producers:

- Alice Feiring had a chat and barrel tasting with Paul Lewakowski, a Michigan man preparing to release his first vintage in the southern Jura. While his experience was largely garnered working with producers from the north (Domaine de la Tournelles and Ratapoil), Alice reports he chose to avoid the north: “It’s getting close to a blanket of vines. There’s far more polyculture in the south.” His first vintage will be released next year, although derived from the 2020 harvest. It has been in barrel since and AF was glowing: “layered, savory and art-like [with] soul.” The hype is interesting – is it because he’s a yank? Is it because it’s new blood in the Jura?

I think it is particularly interesting to consider those questions in relation to this article by Wink Lorch (adapted from her upcoming book Jura Wine: Ten Years On) about the external price-gouging of wines from the Jura (long a problem in Burgundy). The general argument is that it’s crook to be profiting from the buzz surrounding the Jura, and selling wines in the four figures, when the people who make the wines largely continue to live humbly and sell their wines at affordable prices. 

Aaron went a step further (Money vs the Jura, in last month’s Droplets) linking these lower prices to the value of the domaines, values that the winemakers would want to keep low in order to pass the domaine down the family (death taxes here are a rather hectic 30%), and, in a neat little circle, the price of the vineyards themselves remaining accessible to fledgling winemakers. “To put it lightly, the character of a wine region changes when those who operate its vineyards are no longer those who own or long-term-lease them. The characters of a region’s wines change, too.”

- Among the titbits in Alice’s newsletter, there was this little gem about wineglasses (coming from a girl who is very partial to a tumbler). “There is a debate inside the world of natural that the best glass is a glass with no pretension, sort of like the little tasting glass that Jules Chauvet helped to design, although one needs a lot of neck flexibility to drink from it. Or a squat tumbler.” (If you don’t know about Chauvet and his thoughts on wine tasting – he was for precise flavours, as we would describe colours, over poetic descriptions – read the article linked to his name above). 

- I’ve been on a bit of a vinegar bender of late. I added a handful of Banyuls vintages to my stores, plus a Balsamico (ancestral fermentation, no added vinegars or water) from Acetaia San Giacomo, an excellent producer Giorgio is working with. I think it’s time to elevate balsamic out of the purgatory of the 90s … maybe, just maybe, bringing sundried tomatoes with them?

I’m now looking to add a verjuice to the mix (the pressed juice of unripe grapes) from the west coast of France (see Ruth Reichl picking it as the next big thing – tell us something Maggie hasn’t been saying for the past 3 decades!) To that end, did you know the French word vinaigre (where our word vinegar is obviously derived), is composed very simply of vin (wine) and aigre (sour)? So simple and yet I’d never seen it. While I appreciate the PR issues, I do love a good wine maker who produces a good vinegar …

- I have also been developing a bit of a thing for Barrie from Portnoo Market Garden. I like his thoughts and the gentle but direct way he shares them. He is right about the fake olive oil and honey flooding the market.

In Oz, we are lucky to have one of the very best producing the most exquisite wild honey in the Blue Mountains (the third most biodiverse temperate plant region in the world!). Like many of my favourite wine producers, I believe you can taste a little of Tim Malfroy’s personality in his honey. Tim and Emma were awarded winners of the “From the Earth” category this month in the delicious. Produce Awards (read the article here and then go and buy your Christmas presents here). In a little quirk to swing back to wine, it is our lovely friend, talented wine writer and journalist Mike Bennie who compiles all the tasting notes for these excellent honeys. For the olive oil side of the equation, you might enjoy this little round up in Gourmet Traveller.

- Sue and Roger wrote an excellent in-depth explanation of phenolic ripening in their Living Wines newsletter. Spurred on by the “many winemakers throughout the world … looking to produce wines with more phenolic ripeness and less sugar ripeness (and hence lower alcohol levels)” they delved (rather deeply to my school-girl science, but merely skimming the surface in their books) into the chemistry and biology. It is an excellent explanation of phenolics and their contribution to aroma, flavour, structure and colour.

Restaurants:

- The Good Food Guide Awards are all systems go in both Sydney and Melbourne. As with every year, brace yourself for the normal fall outs and dramas, but this year you can add the spice of:

Ben Shewry’s memoir, Uses for Obsession – oh, where to begin?! I have to say I saw truth in some of the criticisms he levelled at the critics and their oppressive lists, but I also thought some of it was wildly inappropriate and contradicted how he claimed to view the world in the rest of the book. It was a rollercoaster! The SMH were so riled up they wrote an article to defend their practices. Scroll down to the bottom for the juicy/controversial bits.

There is the question of how they handle Merivale following their recent investigation and the blanket blaming they applied to Swillhouse. (To this end, I hear Ardyn spoke very eloquently on the topic, while Women and Revolution were awarded for their work in shining a light in the dark corners of Sydney hospitality.)

Tourism Australia/World’s 50 Best also ruffled some feathers with their culinary tour of Sydney, Victoria (including the aforementioned Attica) and Tasmania. Hard to view this as anything other than paying for votes. Sure, that may be necessary to get people to Oz, but how one eyed is it when their meals are also chosen and comped by an Australian team??

(The Sydney awards have now been run – a highly scripted event, from what I’ve been told – with Melbourne in the spotlight for next week. Beyond the hoo-ha, it’s the visual tale of the 40 dishes over 40 years that has been the star of the show. You can check it out here. It’s a fun list, but I think of particular interest for the re-writing of history that was applied – Gumshara, Ho Jiak and An Restaurant all celebrated for dishes that were not in the guide at the time. NB: it’s not their only re-writing of history, as per this article, they already celebrated turning 40 … in 2019 … five years ago.)

- Where I would like to be eating in Oz is Wines of While in WA with Isabel Galiñanes García from next week: “currently cooking at the institution that is La Cave Paul Bert. She has spent the past two years cooking across Paris and elsewhere, including at Delicatessen (@delicatessenplace), Mokoloco (@mokoloco_paris), Fulgurances (@fulgurances_ladresse) and – one of our absolute personal favourites – Aux Deux Amis (@auxdeuxamis). This will be her first time cooking in Australia.”

Words:

- I enjoyed this little gem in A+ Insights on post fusion food: “Back in the early era, fusion wasn’t just a trend, it was the only way to justify higher prices for ethnic food – part of why the term became so problematic. Fusion meant Westernisation: adapting immigrant food to suit Western palates, … immigrant food was ghettoised – confined to stereotypes (low-quality, dirty, smelly, artless) and trapped in the category of cheap eats, meaning that the labour of immigrant chefs was devalued and overlooked. Meanwhile, Western chefs could borrow those same flavours, mark them up, and suddenly it was “elevated” – with no credit given to the originating cultures, or the hands that did the work.”

- The latest issue of Noble Rot came out this month. They have some hefty writers in their lineup for this issue, The Director’s Cup: Simon Hopkinson, Marina O’Loughlin, Kermit Lynch, Delia Smith, and Alice Feiring talking with the late Justin Chearno and his business partner James Murphy. And then there’s Ridley Scott.

- Working through the interviews for the Australian Culinary Archive compendium I have been warmed by the constant references to the importance the industry places on making customers happy. It’s cliched and yet it is true. I’m very proud to work among so much generosity of spirit. Perhaps that is why this appealed, from Jade Simmons via Will Guidera, “Your purpose is not the thing you do, it’s the thing that happens in others when you do the thing you do.”

- Finally, there is little that tickles as much as the collective nouns of animals. A loveliness of ladybeetles is explained here, so too why the ladybeetle came to have her name.

il mensile - September 2024

Written with Giorgio de Maria Fun Wines

And
all
at
once,
summer
collapsed
into
Autumn
-       Oscar Wilde*

Autumn happened swiftly, almost violently. One day we were sweltering down by the river, with a cold wine bobbing nearby, the next it was blankets and firewood. It’s always a very special time to be driving around the small towns in southern France (and I imagine most established wine-growing regions in Europe); the quiet vineyards suddenly abuzz with activity, armies of workers moving up and down their lines, tractors rumbling through the streets trailing the perfume of crushed grapes, a cloud of boozy perfume that lingers over everything.

The grapes have now all been removed from their leafy canopies. It was early in XXX, rainy in YYY and windswept in CCC. Meanwhile, in the world of wine, food and the people that tell those stories:

Words:

This month “anti-trad wine writer” Hannah Crosbie caught my eye via this article in Punch, as it appears she has caught the eye of many. “… my new hot take for the autumn,” Hannah says, “is that the wine industry cannot complain about young people not buying wine when they’re not selling it to young people. Which sounds obvious, but it’s not really a thing.” I admit that I have read none of her work, but was pulled in by her thoughts on trad wine writers, the “very upper class, upper middle class. People who speak in a certain way, which is not [the person] the consumer recognizes …”

The past year or two writing this missive has shown that there is quite a bit of good wine writing being done, and yet her comments made me wonder at what’s going on in the mainstream. There are plenty of places that still make me feel stupid when I ask for help in making a choice. I had a wonderful girlfriend to stay a few months back who is working for a left-wing thinktank in Oz. One of their big focuses is figuring out how we can help change the perspective of the community (in relation to finance) by changing the people who are telling it. Namely this is removing the old white guys from telling us how to run the economy and see if that changes the way we do indeed run the economy. I wonder if there aren’t some parallels there?

According to this article in the NYTimes, this is not the case for natural wines:

“It was never an organized movement but rather a diverse group of like-minded producers spreading globally from France. They all made very different sorts of wines but shared a distaste for authority and the priorities of a commercial culture. This has a particular appeal for the youngest generation of wine drinkers.” It is a fair point when you take on board Hannah’s thoughts on the same – that the formal knowledge and rights and wrongs of traditional wine drinking can be a bit of a turn off.

Aaron Ayscough had a bit to say about this in his Droplets newsletter this week. As always, it was a little bitter sweet: “I suspect many youthful natural wine fans of today will, in a few years, find themselves gravitating towards conventional wines, since the latter tend to better validate the incentive structures of consumerist society, and often prove more crowd-pleasing in office party settings. (A similar dynamic is perceptible in Paris nowadays, even among people I count as friends.) But actual natural wine will probably continue to exert a lasting appeal on young people, whose job it is, after all, to question the systems of their forebears.” There’s a little in there about the Riffault case too, if that’s of interest. 

Restaurants: 

Greg Malouf sadly passed away this month, his heart giving out at 62. Incredibly it was his third heart. Lebanese-Australian Malouf had a penchant for food - and later the kitchen - from a young age. He was too scared to tell his parents, so he instead ran away from home. He was not to be perturbed, not by them, not by heart bypass at 21, a subsequent heart transplant, or even when the second heart stopped cooperating ten years later and he needed a third. As his mother is quoted him saying “If I don’t go back to the kitchen I may as well be dead.”

He had a greater mission, which was to bring his heritage and background into the kitchen. His early days were spent at some of Melbourne’s finest: Stephanie’s, Two Faces, Mietta’s and Fanny’s (what a resume!). He later went on to run O’Connells, a pub in South Melbourne. As was the way with a number of chefs starting out in the 90s, the pub served as trojan horse to the creativity of the chef – allowing them to cook with the financial support of an establishment propped up by alcohol sales. By the time he opened the much acclaimed Momo’s – a restaurant that changed the way Middle Eastern food was perceived across Australia – the food writers were ready and people jumped on his modern takes of this eclectic cuisine. It could be argued that it was his influence that helped Melbourne cement its place as the centre of Middle Eastern food culture in Australia. 

Perhaps more than his restaurants (those mentioned above, alongside second renditions and other versions around the world), I think it was the books he wrote with his ex-wife Lucy that had the most profound impact. Their books opened up a culinary world that had been closed. As David Thompson was to Thai, Malouf was to the Middle East. We were so lucky to have his brilliance and true dedication to the craft. 

You can watch him on a couple of old eps of Food Lovers (start at 10 mins) and Food Safari, or go open one of his books you have up on your shelves and read for yourself.

Other things you might want to be reading include Ben Shewry’s Uses for Obsession. I’m yet to get there, but the controversial take out that keeps being mentioned in the papers is his questioning the validity of the hats and stars and ranking system for restaurants. I’ll have more for next month.

Producers: 

Our intrepid wine merchant spent a few days in the shadows of Etna this past month. We’ve travelled a bit together and I can confirm that GDM chases volcanoes in the way others chase rainbows (or waterfalls).

This month we thought we would look at the way that magestic volcano influences the work of two of Giorgio’s producers: Alice Bonaccorsi and La Ripresa. What we were hoping to see how this incredibly powerful volcano can impact their wines and how their differing backgrounds can in turn impact the vines planted on that volcano.

What do you think Etna contributes to your wines?

La Ripresa: “Mount Etna is above all an enormous mountain, so big that clouds come to attach themselevs to her. Her influence is multiple:

- the altitude (my vines are located between 850 and 980m), which contributes to the freshness and balance of my wines;

- the microclimatic effect, which limits the maritime influence and amplifies the breeze from the Nebrodi;

- the incredible mineral richness of the volcanic soils which allows viticulture without chemical inputs and contributes to the complexity of my wines;

- the magnetic power of a volcano in almost permanent eruption which of course has its influence on all the living and which inspires me daily.

Alice: “Etna, in addition to influencing the characteristics of the soil with its mineral components and profoundly shaping the land with its diverse exposures, represents the very soul of Valcerasa's wines. They encapsulate the energy, elegance, and power of the Volcano.”

What does your background contribute to your wine making?

Alice: “My education has certainly enriched my skills, but it was the passion for this field, passed down from my father, that gave me the decisive push. He made wine for pleasure and involved me in every aspect of the process. Today, after 27 harvests, after many successes but also many mistakes, I can say that what I have achieved is the dream of my life.” 

La Ripresa: “Tenty years of winemaking in Burgundy counts for a lot in my approach to the cellar. A certain form of minimalist classicism that relies more on the intrinsic quality of the grapes and the rendering of the expression of the terroirs rather than on experimentation in the winery. A form of assumed pragmatism that allows me to calmly approach the vagaries of winemaking, without too much stress.”

And how do these two ideas come together in the bottle?

Alice: “My wines perfectly reflect what I have described: they are a fusion of deep passion, a realized dream, and the extraordinary elegance, richness, and power of the land from which they come.”

La Ripresa: “I want my wines to be the most accurate expression of their place of origin: wines of altitude, legible, fresh and for which the gesture of the winemaker fades away in favor of the sensation of the place. No extraction too far, no inputs during vinification and ageing.”

(Je souhaite que mes vins soient l’expression la plus juste de leur lieu d’origine : des vins d’altitude, lisibles, frais et pour lesquels, le geste du vigneron s’efface au profit de la sensation du lieu. Pas d’extraction trop poussées, pas d’intrant pendant la vinification et l’élevage.)

* (This quote is attributed to Oscar Wilde, but they have “fall” in place of autumn, and yet no-one seems to know the source. As Oscar was Irish, I’m taking the liberty of giving it an upgrade to “autumn”.)

il mensile - August 2024

Written with Giorgio de Maria Fun Wines

A few great players bowed out this month: Pete Wells figuratively, Michel Guerard and Justin Chearno, sadly, quite literally.

NYTimes critic, Wells, wrapped up his column chastising the insidious creep of technology and its dehumanising of hospitality. He had it in for both the restaurants (online booking systems, ghost kitchens) and the diners (the instagram set). Will Guidara, of Eleven Madison Park, responded eloquently, arguing that technology can be used with grace and, perhaps more importantly, suggesting that if we (the media and the dining public) want to preserve hospitality, it’s not enough to complain when it’s gone, we need to put it on a pedestal now. “I’ve read a lot of New York Times reviews and I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve read anything about the hospitality and service …”

Wells’ prelude to the whinge was actually another whinge about the toll reviewing can take on a body and the presumed impact that has had on a number of critics that came before – he cited Leibling, Gill and Gold. Ruth Reichl had some thoughts on that this month and there was a lovely ode to Jonathan Gold in her newsletter – scroll down to the speech she gave about Gold as she was awaiting the sad news of his death:

“I thought that what we need is more investigative writers telling us the truth. And that’s not wrong. But now I see is that sometimes the softest words make the biggest impact. Jonathan wrote about delicious dishes in far-flung neighborhoods. He did not write an overtly political word.  And yet he touched millions of people and changed an entire city.  Those of us who want to change the world would do well to remember that stories that seem very small can turn out to be the biggest ones of all.”

Researching the Powerhouse’s Culinary Archive book Michel Guerard’s name has come up more frequently than anyone else through the 70s and 80s. He was (one of ) the godfathers of nouvelle cuisine in France; people like Phillip Searle, Tony Bilson, Cath Kerry, Peter Doyle were looking to Guerard for their inspiration and he is everywhere in their interviews. You may remember I also found his name prominently featured on the timeline at the El Bulli museum – indeed, the nouvelle cuisine movement was the only one lauded by Ferran (beyond his own!). Curiosity got the better of me and I bought his two books earlier this month: Cuisine Gourmande and Cuisine Minceur, two opposing concepts that were intwined in his quest for simplicity. An obituary can be found here, but for Australian context take the time to listen to this excellent podcast with Nigel Hopkins and Cath Kerry discussing that era in Adelaide.

While Guerard’s legacy is already in the history books, Chearno passed away unexpectedly, he was only 54. Co-owner of The Four Horsemen in Brooklyn, he’s remembered as one of the key proponents of natural wine in NYC. I didn’t know Chearno, or indeed anything about him, but have been struck by how many people have described him as a mentor, as someone who lit up a room, connected people and made the industry better (see his obituary in Grub Street here, or the link above for an interview with Aaron Ayscough and some further reading). Another life dedicated to small, positive interactions to make all the things better. 

Producers:

Alice Feiring’s newsletter this month was all about sommeliers. The catalyst was the 2023 Best Sommelier of the World Competition. She was there as a judge for the Gerard Basset Lifetime Acheivement award and his ghost is scattered throughout her newsletter. “Gerard believed the most important character element for a sommelier was kindness and compassion.” Hear, hear.

This was no simple celebration of the somm, but rather a deep questioning of these kinds of events and competitions, of the system and the institution.“There is something confounding about modern organizations and wine education platforms that require top sommeliers to be schooled in cigar service yet ignore natural wine or how to handle wine service at a casual café or wine bar. This setting and this customer seemed not to matter. How is it possible that the system wants their profession to be linked solely to three-star venues and not bring the love of wine to all?”

Her angst focused not just on the type of venue but the sin of ommission relating to natural wine itself and, indeed, viticulture in general (see her insta post and the responses here). “When Arvid Rosengren (Best Sommelier 2016) spoke about the saké, he connected the beverage to the region, the water, and the local rice. None of the others said a word about the wines’ viticulture, farming, or terroir … I congratulated Arvid … for reminding the room that what we were drinking was an agricultural product.”

She conducted a survey with a number of somms to flesh out the topic, featuring some lovely thoughts from Josep Roca (El Celler de Can Roca) on the topic: “I am not in favor of sommeliers dedicating themselves to studying for Master of Wine. It is difficult for me to understand the cold, clinical look and the “international style” wines that do not always respond to my idea of wine … I bet on wine learning from a less calculated and more intuitive point of view.”

I also found this interesting: “I believe that there is a need to rethink some issues in the formation and characteristics of AOC, DO, DOCG wines… In any case, I think it is essential to raise a debate about how these schools only value typicity when they are wines that have sulfites. Visit the vignerons, feel their love, understand their processes, step on their soils, accept their diversity and naturalness. I believe that wine training can be based on diversity, from a more intuitive rather than academic perspective.”

There was also a profile (paywall) on Mads Kleppe, the Norwegian born/Georgia-residing somm who made Noma’s wine list 100% natural, a task he subsequently tackled for the Adjara group in Georgia (you may remember we discussed him in June’s Il Mensile). Aaron Ayscough also released a podcast ep (no paywall) with Mads this month, one that touches on many of the themes above. 

Restaurants:

Of course, I can’t get through this month’s missive without mentioning the SMH investigation into the Swillhouse restaurant group. The dominoes will fall (apparently sooner rather than later, if Four Corners have their way) and I must say the silence of so many operators has been deafening. The exposé has been a number of years in the building, the issue a number of decades in the making, so no-one can truly express surprise. If the women are brave enough to speak up about what happened, the operators should be brave enough to speak up about what didn’t (I’m talking about making spaces safe, I’m talking about reporting crimes, I’m talking about taking firm and efficient action against perpetrators).

I do also think it’s probably a bit like our environmental woes – the past needs reckoning but the future really needs our attention. Personally, I don’t necessarily blame those in a position of power around me who didn’t speak up when I was mistreated because I wouldn’t have sex with one boss or another, but I would like to think that will be different for the next generation.

I also think we need to be thoughtful in the way we sweep alcohol into this discussion. Many of the beautiful bottles I have tasted have been generously shared at late-night tables of shuttered restaurants. Treated right this can be a great place to learn, not just about the wine but about the joy of sharing a bottle. It brings me back to Alice’s newsletter, who threw in a dig at the WHO alcohol guidelines which, she explains, are quite scandalously crafted by Movendi (whose tagline is “Development through alcohol prevention”). “In an era where alcohol is under attack, I hereby state that I believe drinking sensibly, and occasionally even to a beautiful excess, is a life enhancement that needs to be celebrated.”  

Words: 

A gentle segue into another deafening silence. Did any of you go to the animal orchestra at Barangaroo a couple of years back? “A great silence is spreading over the natural world even as the sound of man is becoming deafening,” Bernie Krause wrote. Krause’s work is back in the papers for the hour-long recordings he’s been conducting at the height of spring over the past 30 years, sitting under a maple in Sugarloaf Ridge state park, near San Fran. 

“In his first recording [30 years ago], a stream of chortles, peeps and squeaks erupt from the animals that lived in the rich, scrubby habitat. His sensitive microphones captured the sounds of the creek, creatures rustling through undergrowth, and the songs of the spotted towhee, orange-crowned warbler, house wren and mourning dove … in April last year, Krause played back his recording and was greeted with something he had not heard before: total silence. The recorder had run for its usual hour, but picked up no birdsong, no rush of water over stones, no beating wings. “I’ve got an hour of material with nothing, at the high point of spring,” says Krause. “What’s happening here is just a small indication of what’s happening almost everywhere on an even larger scale.”

Watch his TED talk to learn more about him and his work.

Finally, for those needing a little reminder about all the gentle beauty intrinsic in our industry, I implore you to watch Chris Fischer, telling the story of the Obamas dining in his restaurant in Martha’s Vinyeard. It’s actually got very little to do with them, but so much to do with the simple pleasures in life and hospitality – he builds a story like you may think to build a meal: small details, accumulating to create the whole. From his Dad’s lobster pots as harbinger to summer to the fire of the grill spitting back at chefs throwing steaks down and the gentle architecture of a salad plated in his own restaurant. “I wasn’t raised on a farm, the farm raised me.” It’s beautiful.

il mensile - July 2024

  Written with Giorgio de Maria Fun Wines.

Some thoughts on cork 

Driving across Sardinia last year we passed forests of ringed cork trees, their trunks torniqueted, their bark protruding from scars around their belly. There’s a complicity, perhaps soft guilt, that I felt driving through the noble trees that have shared their seasons so amply. And yet,  perhaps the very fact that we can see the subsequent growth is a happy tale, a tale of true sustainability.

Our favourite environmental crusader, Joost Bakker, certainly thinks so. He has been there recently too, following the bucadori as they scale centenary oak trees harvesting cork. In his post, he credits Allan Savory for the inspiration behind this particular quest – do you remember his incredible TED talk on desertification?

“Allan and I met 2014 when I hosted a dinner for him,” explains Joost via Insta. “Since then the world has lost over 100 million hectares of agricultural land to desert, a global problem that desperately needs solutions. I believe we can learn a lot from this ancient Sardinian method …

“This evergreen Oak - Quercus suber is exceptional at enduring drought and makes little demand on soil fertility or water. I believe it’s a great defence against desertification. Watching grazing animals here in Sardinia able to find shade and pasture under these trees is unbelievable, yesterday I counted 32 species of grasses and herbs growing under one oak.

“Is this industry #circular or #zerowaste ? Absolutely! Especially now that cork granules are replacing mined stone in renders thanks to over 2 decades of research and development by @diegomingarelli I doubt there’s another industry that’s more sustainable.”

I’m pleased they are finding new uses for cork, as we see them used less and less in our wines. Ye olde cork taint - caused by TCA in the bark (in turn thought to be caused by pesticides and wood preservatives, meaning the incidence of cork taint has risen in recent decades) - has long been a thorn, but now coupled with inflated prices (1.50 – 2 euro a cork!) the natural properties of “punched” cork (namely its ability to stop the liquid coming out, while allowing tiny amounts of air to go in – just enough to allow the wine to stay “alive”) have been edged out for newer technologies.

And so down into a rabbit hole of cork alternatives I fell:

Let’s start with the diam cork, which is still made from cork. The tree is harvested (at 7+ years) and the bark is air-dried for 6 – 12 months. Instead of being punched, the cork is pulverised, cleaned (using pressurised CO2) and reconstituted. The great boon of this method is the subsequent “controlled permeability” of the diam cork. Anecdotal evidence from producers certainly suggests that this level of control does help with maturation, producing consistently better wines over the years. The use of polyurethane to hold the cork together has been a hitch, but it is being challenged with new, more sustainable technologies (see here and here).

Synthetic corks, as the name suggests, are made with non-cork products. Not to be discredited so quickly, there are advancements seeing the use of recycled ocean plastics and other biodegradable bi-products.

Finally, there is glass stopper (vinolok) – fully recyclable, yet relatively expensive and with a high rate of oxygen transfer making it not suitable for long-aged wines – and the crown seal (an efficient option for sparkling).

Certainly the take up over here has been much slower (or perhaps more subtle) than over there. A friend opened a bottle here the other day and practically choked on discovering a visibly synthetic cork (I’m sure he’s actually pulled many non-cork corks, just not so flagrantly coloured). He may as well have pulled a dildo from the bottle neck. I keep mum on the screwcap thing. They would die. Vive la France.

Producers:

- I loved this conversation with Emmanuel Houillon-Overnoy, the man who has run the cult Jura wine domain founded by Pierre Overnoy since 2000, and his adoptive son.

“I think we are in a world where money ruins a lot of people. More and more it’s a race to make money off the backs of other people … We exploit the people who work on the raw materials, whether it’s the wine makers, the farmers … We speculate on the price of wheat to sell to poor countries. It’s a shame.

“What bothers me a little is that it’s more than just wine. We put in a lot of emotion or love. It doesn’t really have a lot of value, well, it’s more it has sentimental value. When you open an old bottle to try to relive a moment from the past, it’s something that’s strong … You can’t buy everything.”

He goes on to say that these (on-sold) prices are too high for what they do (a novel concept); he talks about which varieties are coping better through the climactic changes they’re seeing in the Jura (with reference back to difficulties in fermentation we have previously discussed in this missive); alludes to the importance of keeping the grass up in the vineyard, which I think links nicely to this, in Aaron’s newsletter.

Watch the whole mini documentary here. It’s ten minutes in the company of a lovely man with beautiful thoughts. (Note, he always referes to the domaine as “Pierre’s” even though he has now been running it for 24 years. Humble and thoughtful.)

- Some changes were made to the labelling laws in Europe at the end of last year. Many hoped these would provide a little moment of truth for all those hidden additives and enhancers. Not necessarily so, says The Morning Claret.  

Restaurants: 

- As all eyes turn towards the city of love, GDM and I thought it might be nice to share a few of our favourites. Ditch the pop-ups and head here instead:

Le Rigmarole for a Giorgio-endorsed (!!) pizza in Paris.

The Butcher of Paris in the Marché des Enfants Rouge in the Marais

Folderol for ice cream (and wine)

Paul Bert for those seeking the classics

And, finally, Le Baratin for old school natural wine bistro in the 20th

(For a more complete look at France, check out Sue and Roger’s excellent list here.)

- Noma have launched their docuseries this month. I’m yet to find the time, but if you do, please report back!

- Meanwhile, The Bear dropped their chef-laden series three this month. Lee Tran Lam’s article on the cookbooks tickled me, particularly for the effort the set team had actually put into those fleeting glimpses of bookshelves – switching up the desert books to reflect the changes in the kitchen. God I love that cookbooks have survived the Kindle era so very successfully. (NB: this is a catching genre – Kamala Harris’s cookbooks were similarly analysed this week in Esquire.)

Words:

- Katie Worobeck shared her views on regenerative agriculture – “a practice that puts soil health and biodiversity at the forefront of agriculture system design …” While for many that means not tilling the soil, year long cover crops, thoughtful soil analysis, the reduction of inputs, and increase in biodiversity, Katie’s pissed to see the term coopted by industrial agriculture (noting, for example, that the producer of round up has a division dedicated to regenerative agriculture …) “I feel robbed of my words,” she says.

“After reflection,” Katie says, “it seems that another highly technical conception of agriculture is falling a bit short of the desired system transformation. I would argue what is missing, not only in regenerative agriculture, but in viticulture in general, is a robust and holistic political discourse around farming … sustainability is fundamentally a political process and that we should not shy away from including questions about social, economic and political systems in our thinking about ecological farming.” Agroecology is the system to watch, she concludes. 

- While we’re on politics, you may enjoy Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter about Bourdain’s visit to Jerusalem for Parts Unknown. “Bourdain’s shows,” Alicia says, “such as the “Jerusalem” episode, will depict domesticity, it’s portrayed as a fact of life rather than the focal point. Perhaps that is the aspect of his work that allowed it to transcend a food television that has mainly sought to educate viewers on how to cook, but not on how food can help us talk to each other and think through complex issues.” It’s heartbreaking and poignant. Watch here.

il mensile - June 2024

Written with Giorgio de Maria Fun Wines.

The tumultuous spring continues in France, with the fruit coming onto the vines as the weather lurches unpredictably. In the Canary Islands they’re already picking, while at home in Australia the vines are drifting into sleep, the wines hopefully enjoying that little extra chill in the cellar to help the fermentation (see more on that below). In the Cook Islands, Sean Moran is eating sea grapes and asking if anyone has tried to grow them at home. Anyone? 

We’ve just returned from a rather spectacular little sojourn in Spain. We took our old Combi van (admittedly better on paper than in reality) and meandered (very literally) down the coast, from the haunting vacancy of the Camargue and the vine-crowded beauty of the coastline around Banyuls: tielle in Sète, anchovies in Coulliore, tapas in Cadaqués.

There was a spectacular lunch at Rafa’s in Roses. An unassuming location: the town large and ugly, unsurprisingly deserted, the restaurant in a laneway that lacked personality, let alone romance. But the seafood sung: tiny telline clams, both smoky and sweet, a perfect turbot (and the pure delight of sucking the little orzo-esque fatty deposits between the bones of the dorsal fin) and, the subtle showstopper, a simple tomato and onion salad. The tomatoes were skinned, but didn’t appear cooked, the seeds mostly removed; that deep, ghostly umami amplified simply with a little salt, vinegar and oil. I don’t think we’re in peak tomato season, the solstice having only just passed us by, and yet these tomatoes were perfect. Thanks for the tip, Burgo.

It wasn’t all food and wine (it was definitely mostly food and wine), with a pit stop at the delightful little Fauvist gallery in Coulliore. It’s an art period I have loved since discovering the collection at L’Annonciade in St Tropez (another delight if you’re ever in the area). These galleries are both well-placed to celebrate the moment, the movement shines with the Mediterranean sunshine. The “wild ones” had way of seeing the world in bright and happy hues, liberating colour from subject – a short-lived but exciting passage from impressionism to cubism. I wonder why some creative pursuits have such clear delineation in their so-called movements, and others don’t. Friendship? Open and shared thought? Organised criticism and exposition? Blatant copying? Hmm.

We also managed to visit the Dali Museum – essentially a humble collection of fishermen’s cottages Dali and Gala joined together to make a home. It is decorated in Hirst Castle-esque whimsy, haute yet humble. An intimate insight into the artist and his wife. And yet, in the light-filled beauty of the home, there were no hints of the dark connections to Franco et al. Obviously far right politics are a pretty hot topic over here right now and the guide practically choked on her words when asked about it. While living, his politics saw him cast off from his contemporaries within the surrealist movement (another movement!) and even Orwell calls him a grub, which is quite something, coming from Orwell.

I went to sleep pondering his alliances vs my own beliefs contrasted with the beauty of that little home. Where does this fit in the idea of marching with our wallet? In supporting the people we like and respect? Can we/should we separate art from emotion, from politics? And wine? And restaurants? Where do we draw the line? How do we separate rumours from fact? Vendetta from vengeance? In newsletters like this we certainly have the choice to do good by good people. In our homes, likewise. My mate James Parry would only buy cookbooks by people he really respected as he didn’t want any jerks on his bookshelf. I like that. I named my child James.

All that said, we were really there for another museum. Like many before us, we were making the pilgrimage to El Bulli. Of course the restaurant has long closed, the space now designated to telling the story of the 50 years that came before, along with the projects that will occupy their future (a 30 volume, 500 pages/volume “Bullipedia” among them). I was there to look at the ways in which culinary history and culture can be recorded and represented – a research trip for the book I am writing with the erudite and exceptional Julie Gibbs. It is a book that will tell the story of the past 50 years of cooking in Australia via the Powerhouse Museum’s Culinary Archive.

The predominant focus at El Bulli is on representing Ferran’s theories on cooking – the Sapiens theory – and the creativity and novelty intrinsic in the molecular gastronomy movement; from the seemingly simple questions (what is cooking?) to the more complex (also, what is cooking?). As you will now know, I am fascinated by these waves of thought. It appears Ferran saw his influence similarly and sought to classify it that way. Stepping in after Nouvelle Cuisine, another movement with founders, commandments and disciples, he saw his food as part of a “revolution that respects the past” - his key role to create, not copy (and create he did, the museum holding a record of some 1800 dishes created during his reign). There were lists of like-minded thinkers from around the world (Peter Doyle an interesting and I think under-rated inclusion from Oz).

This is what we are distilling from the archives. What waves (beyond the obvious immigration waves) have defined Australian cooking? What are the key themes, movements, moments? Your thoughts and ideas would be very warmly welcomed.

Restaurants:

L’ami Louis has been sold this week to LMVH. It provided a great excuse to indulge in A. A. Gill’s review again. From the waiters (like “Vichy ticket collectors”) to the snails (“Twenty minutes later, possibly under their own steam, the snails arrive.”); the mâche and frisée salad (“two leaves that rarely share a bowl, due to their irreconcilable differences”) all leading to the fatal heart punch (“reputation and expectation are the MSG of fine dining”). He is sorely missed. That kind of brave truth telling is missed too.

Neil Perry won the icon award at the 2024 50 Best Awards (you can also check out the rest of the list, if you’re keen).

Producers:

Aaron was talking about wine ferments in less intense winters (his suggestion being we will find more mousiness), while on his podcast he had a chat to Sune Rosforth, of Copenhagen wine importer Rosforth and Rosforth. Sune sails in much of his wine from France and now Spain … actually on a sailing boat. There was some interesting chat between the two about the impact of the waves on the wine (spoiler alert, it was not the negatives we are used to discussing in Oz, rather the opposite).

Sune also talks about the impact Georgian wine-maker John Wurdeman (Pheasant’s Tears) had on his early understanding of natural wine. If you know Mike Bennie, you’ll be following his adventures in the region on his insta. My curiosity with Georgia began not with wine, but with its inclusion in the olive growing map around the Med – the only non-Med facing region with olives. From a wine perspective it’s easy to see the appeal: 500-odd indigenous grapes and 6,000-odd year history of growing. Follow Adain Raftery and Mads Kleppe for an insight into their work in the region. Apartamento Magazine have a feature on John in their up-coming issue and a fabulous little film here to whet your appetite, Alice Feiring write a whole book about the region if you want to know more.

I have been thinking a lot about so-called “plasticulture” – there are some fascinating comments in this post, also in this Atlantic article (pay wall), which I’m guessing was the catalyst. Not just environmental impact, but also the political fallout. I think it’s fair to suggest that some of these strangleholds on agriculture have been created by the demand and leave farmers feeling they have no way out. Take, for example, rising petrol prices that impinge unfairly on those who need cars to get about all while being judged by those in the inner city who do actually have the spending power. It’s hard to imagine hectic protectionism is the solution. By the time you read this France will have had the first round of voting out of the way, to say I am anxious would be a gross understatement.

Words:

I enjoyed reading Flavorama author Arielle Johnson on, funnily enough, flavour: “One of the big problems in our modern systems is that flavor has suffered and nutrition has suffered, and these things are not unrelated. There appears to be some relationship between the flavor compounds in plants, and the nutritionally bioactive ones. The research is still very early, but it  suggests that a lot of flavor compounds are either related to things like vitamins or are vitamins themselves.” Nothing that intuition (and anecdotal evidence) hasn’t already told us. I’m looking forward to science catching up. Let’s hope that happens soon.

Ruth Reichl was awarded the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award this month. I have told you to sign up to her excellent newsletter La Briffe before, I (re)implore you to do it, if you have not already. This time it’s some lovely thoughts from her archive on the revolution of farming in California; “They are perfectionists who work very hard not because they expect to get rich but simply because they expect to get the best.”

It's been a little while since I sung the praises of the St John Instagram. It is still my all-time favourite, the account for all restaurants to aspire to. Equally uplifting is the wonderful work of Manon farm, here singing the praises of their maize. And finally, an a perennial (ha) favourite who has now committed her words to paper with her own book (photographed by another wonderful friend Luke Burgess, photographer of the pic of Giorgio and I above). Broccoli and other love stories will undoubtedly be imbibed with all of her beauty, grace and observation. Find it. Buy it.

il mensile - May 2024

Written with Giorgio de Maria Fun Wines.

In 2023, global wine consumption was down to 1996 levels … when the planet had 2 billion less people. It’s widely reported that Millennials and Gen Z are drinking a lot less than older generations, a trend that now appears to be creeping generational brackets (I can’t be the only one in this vicious loop of “sober-curious” insta ads?). And then, there’s Dry-January. And July. While I happily admit to a healthy (ha) interest in the explosion of non-alcoholic beverages, I am a little confused that it is now considered better to be smoking pot than drinking wine.

I like a glass of wine. I like the taste – not just for the flavours but also for the capsule of time and place that are protected under cork. I like the conviviality of sharing a bottle, the anticipation and joy in hearing that cork being popped, gathering the glasses, stopping to look into each other’s eyes before the first sip, sitting, lingering. I also like that gentle feeling that washes over you about one glass down, the exhaling, when everything relaxes a little - yes, yes, that would be the alcohol.

(Quick caveat - I don’t, for a second, want to say everyone should drink. If you don’t want to, or if it’s no good for you, then please don’t. I support you. But I also don’t want to have the opposite rammed down my throat. I don’t think that’s fair either.)

I am also curious. What happened? When did wine become the devil? Has alcohol really become the new cigarette? I’m not going to get into the science, the history of the studies for and against (and tales about those who fund them), or the contradictory blue zones, let alone the inflammatory millennial arguments. Nor am I going to delve into the history – social, cultural and otherwise – of previous temperance movements (although I did enjoy that particular rabbit hole).

A softer idea, comes from Alice Feiring:

“Whether in the vines or the market, wine is in crisis. Sales are down. People blame the increased interest in non-alcoholic drinks, overlooking the obvious. Wine is far too expensive for those who drink it. But it barely makes a living for those who sell it. I don’t have the answer for climate crisis or business, but something has to give. With lower yields, winemakers have to keep their prices higher to survive. So what to do? That’s why people are considering the more forgiving hybrids, rethinking pruning and planting, and on a biz level, it is time to lobby for more flexibility within the distribution system.”

Maybe Alice is right and this (like everything else at the moment) is about the hip pocket (vs cost of production)? If that’s the case, wine wouldn’t be alone. It’s precarious out there right now. Restaurants are closing left, right and centre. The pinch is real. It’s funny that for so many a meal and a glass of wine are the first things to go - when sitting at a table with friends, languishing over that last bit of cheese and a glass of wine, are some of the things that I think really tickle the soul. They certainly tickle mine.

She is also right to suggest this means creative thinking. Not just in wine but I would suggest also in restaurants (see the newly formed Australian Restaurant and Café Association). We have to support the people and ideals that we hope to come out the other side with us. Good environmental practice, good taste, art and community should not be the things we cast aside when the going gets tough, these should be the things we lift up.

Producers:

To that end, tonight our wonderful friends Andy and Claire are hosting a fundraising dinner at Bar Merenda to support Jonai Farm’s plans to build a micro-abattoir in Daylesford, Victoria. As farmers across the country rapidly lose access to abattoirs, butchers, grain mills and dairy processing, it’s heartening to see people like this working collectively to protect the future of local food. This is a prime example of the kind of thing we need to lift up.

Jonai Farms work with a community of small-scale farmers on Djaara Country. Their aim is take back control of the infrastructure intrinsic to livestock farming that has been captured by multinational corporations – in this case, abattoirs.

The Meat Collective @ Jonai, to be built in collaboration with Pig & Earth Farm, will be a micro-abattoir where the Jonai and several other local livestock farmers will be guaranteed the future of slaughter with the highest animal welfare. Fees will be democratically set by all farmer members to cover costs of operation (energy, compliance, consumables, etc) and ensure all meatsmiths earn a decent livelihood. No surplus value will be extracted from the system - there will be no financial returns beyond the wages earned by those doing the labour. The returns, instead, include beneficial environmental custodianship, highest animal welfare outcomes, and farmer autonomy and well being. 

This has been a decade-long project. It is fundamental to setting a precedent for our future, while in many respects being a return to the past – a time when farmers could choose where their beasts where slaughtered, take them there in a stress-free manner, be assured they weren’t to then spend a day overwhelmed, in the sun among other stressed animals. This is not a step back, but a leap forward. Read more about how you can be involved here.

Restaurants:

At a time when we need more examples of how booze can be done well, of why it is important to community, “genre-defining” Hobart pub Tom McHugo’s is being forced to close. Have the tissues at hand while you read this one, Nola James has gathered together tributes from many of Tassie’s greats and written a love letter to “the” pub. I was particularly touched by how many times the word “home” appeared.

Kylie is also shutting her doors at Lucky Kwong this month. Did you have a chance to watch her Australian Story? You can read a little summary here (tissues may be handy here too). Her reasons for closing are best articulated in her own words: “For me, food and cooking is an exploratory and conscious act, not only a pleasure for the senses but also a platform for cultural exchange, storytelling and building community. I want to go deeper …” - read more here.

Tetsuya has also announced the end for his eponymous restaurant after 37 years. I have perused the articles on the topic, but haven’t really found one that gets to the crux of the restaurant’s value to Australia (or at least the way I see it). For me, it’s found somewhere between those heady golden years when Tets was still in Rozelle, before the cross-cultural love affair between Japanese and French cooking was called fusion (with or without the “con-”). It continues with the alumni who are still defining our culinary landscape: Mikey Clift and Dan Pepperell for their work at Clam Bar, Pellegrini’s and 916 (incidentally also closing!); Luke Burgess and Rodney Dunn, who met at Tets Rozelle and went on to kickstart the culinary push to Tasmania (Westcott of Tom McHugo’s was the first employee at Garagistes, Dunn continues to wow at the Agrarian Kitchen); Luke Powell, who has just released a new book Quality Meats; the boys from the Three Blue Ducks; Kylie Javier-Ashton who led the floor at Momo; Martin Benn, Dan Hong, Louis Tikaram, the list goes on and on and on. And while it is very penis-heavy, it’s still astonishing. What. A. Legacy.

(PS – having typed that, it would be remiss of me to not mention that Kylie leaves behind her a trail of similar pedigree: OTama Carey (LFS), Mat Lindsay (ester), Jemma Whiteman (ante), among them.)

This isn’t just a Sydney phenomenon. South of the border Izakaya Den, La Luna and Gingerboy are all shuttering/have shuttered too. While the reasons are many and varied, the outlook isn’t fantastic. Dani Valent’s latest article on the situation suggests we could lose 5,000 restaurants over the next year.

Of course there’s always a window open somewhere - this month’s window is Neil Perry’s Song Bird, with 230 seats and 100 dishes on the menu, no less. As Terry pointed out in his Margaret review, it’s taken 40 years of producer relations to get here. Neil’s commitment to produce – particularly when sourcing meat or fish – has been inspiring for decades. I am looking forward to seeing what he does with that here. 

Things to eat:

In other brighter news, the NYTimes put out a list of the 25 Essential Pasta Dishes to eat in Italy right now. The list was carefully compiled from shortlists of five food writers/chefs/historians, then whittled down to come to this list, and then tasted in situ by anonymous food industry reps – the incredible rigour (and budget) applied to their selection process has resulted in an excellent list drawing in the fancy and the humble.

Dishes like sardine pasta (“… all the contradictions and complexities inherent to Sicilian cooking: high-end ingredients like plump sweet raisins and resinous pine nuts mix with sardines, the poorest of fish, barely boned, to form more of a stew than a pasta sauce; it’s also redolent of wild fennel. The warm, chaotic Trattoria Ferro di Cavallo, which opened in 1944 and is in the heart of the old city, doesn’t take reservations …”) jostle for attention alongside Bottura’s modernist take on lasagne. It’s a list to travel by (if you’re plotting Mexico, they were there last year.)

For those considering France this year, Aaron has compiled his list of wine salons over summer. You can find it here.

In a broader sense, Gareth Storey wrote about where to eat tripe, while this Frenchy put together a handy little instructional vid on how to politely cut blue cheese (he calls it a “bleu persillés” - a cheese that is mottled, looking like it has chopped parsley through it) – heart and rind for everyone!

While I’m still eating all the peas and asparagus, I see Pat’s got his hands on some puntarelle, while Georgie has all the radicchios and chicories “their textures as diverse as their flavours.” Winter’s delights, worth indulging in.

il mensile - April 2024

Written with Giorgio de Maria Fun Wines.

It’s been an abundant spring in France. The timely rains and mild temperatures meant, among much natural beauty (I have never seen so many irises), a glorious glut of wild asparagus. There was enough to pick a bouquet each morning as I walked Jimmy to school - it’s a seven minute walk, and yet every morning there were more, easily enough for our lunch, for weeks on end. We found morels in our garden (a first!); the thyme flowered early, so too the lilac. By mid-April I had packed away our winter clothes, fished out our swimmers and we indulged in a dip in the little river that runs through our valley.

And then the thermometer plunged. Not a little, a lot. It brought the morning frost. Harsh here, vicious in the Auvergne, the Jura and beyond (the Moselle, Savoie and parts of Spain). For us that meant digging back under the bed for the winter woollies and chopping some wood. For the wine makers it meant the whole year’s work gone. One night. One year.

Frosts are naturally cruel. They occur when the weather is dry, the wind is calm and there is no cloud cover. It is not simply freezing water (in fact, spraying water on the crops can be a counter to the frost, a concept that blows my school-girl science mind), but a freezing of the dew, the condensation that forms on the plants. On these nights, the warmth of the soil escapes into the never never and the area closer the ground is colder than a couple of feet above it, thus its name “radiation frost”. At the wrong time of the year it can annihilate all the promise of early spring in one evil morning. That’s what happened this year.

All vines have three key moments of development: bud burst, flowering and veraison (ripening). When an early bud burst (the emergence of the delicate embryonic buds) meets a tardive frost the results are devastating. This can be especially pronounced in appellations with early budding varieties (eg chardonnay and pinot noir) and low trellising; it is further influenced by the position of the individual site (cold air will seek lower ground), the timing of the winter pruning and even the amount of grass between vines and the positions of rock walls and gullies (read more here).  

While little can be done retroactively, there are ways to fight the frost at the time – you will know that uncomfortable beauty of the vineyards lit by candlelight (at 15euro/candle with 600-800 required to cover a hectare) or the windmills designed to beat down the warmer air above (sitting 10m above the vines and costing a cool 30,000 euros) and the aforementioned sprinklers (requiring not only installation, but enough water to spray a mist throughout the whole night). For all that cost, these methods are far from foolproof - the candles, for example, only work in the early negatives. 

While tardive frosts have met bud burst many times before, there can be no question that the climate crisis is going to make all agriculture harder. I have nerded out on these graphs and stats – particularly the projections of bud burst and the last frost date by region over the next century (p235). Two key variables, but among so many others.

In the immediate future, these vignerons will need to look elsewhere for their grapes if they want to make use of their presses, tanks and cellars (and get something into their bank accounts). The negociant option – buying grapes from elsewhere and bottling them at home – will be the likely path for many. This style, I imagine, presents a whole new set of challenges. How do you bottle yourself – and in a more banal sense your brand – without your land? Not to mention the grapes, varieties, picking, transport etcetera.

It was this time last year GDM and I spent a few days in the Jura – we visited Katie Worobeck of Maison Maenad and Damien Bastian in the Savoie. My heart goes out to them, and all the vineyards around them. Desperately and deeply.

Producers

To switch pace, I’ll start with this delightful insta discovery: @Gourmeffe (I conceded with their million followers, I may be a little late to this party). Every post lifts my heart – anchovies being packed for garum, the lemons of Amalfi, pasta being dried in Gragnano. I love the gentle combination of history, culture and beauty, of the high end and the humble.

Dan Barber’s on a mission to elevate the old dairy cow in the US (nb it is already revered in Basque country, Etxebarri having always offering the old dairy cow steak – one of my best meals ever - and subsequently Lennox Hastie having brought a little of that to our shores). We should be doing more of this at home. The trick is finding the farmer who is able to provide the ladies an extra season on pasture after their retirement to allow them to regain form. It’s probably the least we could do.

For something that is new, please get behind Joost and his hemp plantations. If we’re not supporting him, who will? Also pop your name on the Maugean Skate petition – Tasmanian salmon is an aberration. Albo in a Tassal high-vis was one of my angrier moments this year (surely it’s not a big ask for someone in the parliamentary team to create a government branded high-vis, alleviating the need for the PM becoming a walking billboard? It’s an embarrassment to us and to the office).

Sue and Roger took a look at the ins and outs of Coteaux Bourguignons in their Living Wines newsletter this month, along with an exploration of enfariné, a rare variety found in the Jura. Always such an insightful read.

Writers

Two of the three finalists in the James Beard restaurant-chef cookbook category are Australian, an incredible feat and a testament to the current state of Australian food publishing. Bravo Mat and Pat for their beautiful ester book, and to Josh and Julie for another magnificent book on Fish Butchery. Check out the entire list, particularly the articles at the bottom. It is always a good place to go fishing for some well-constructed culinary words and ideas. 

On that note, writer, cook, editor (and friend) Harriet Davidson is back on this side of the globe. Read her delightful words on figs and then you, too, will be obliged to follow her adventures over here.

Joe and Chanelle, wonderful artists and excellent company, have made a series of artworks using vintage (very beautiful vintage at that) glassware. The artworks are now for sale – check them out here. If you are looking for the vessel for a specific cocktail …

Restaurants

I don’t have much to report from the restaurant world this month, but GDM and I are considering adding a regular little list of vigneron favourites from around the world here. The local, the humble, those serving good wine with their great food. This month, our picks are from Antony at La Sorga: Chez Uva, in Sete and Le Canon in Nice. (I would complement them with Marie-Sophie’s Pimpant in Sete and my perennial favourite Le Merenda in Nice – bring on the summer).

il mensile - March 2024

Written with Giorgio de Maria Fun Wines

There was a suggestion the first didn’t have enough wine, but then when I wrote the second it was suggested it had too much and maybe the first was better. So, here I am doubling down, ignoring all of that, and writing wine again. Afterall, it was the vineyards that had a story to tell this month!

I read (on a gardening post about the scourge of Australian grafted cherry blossoms, of all things) that we know the price of everything and the cost of nothing. A fair accusation. We’re conditioned to ignore the costs that have been sneakily and silently built into our future (namely the waste by-products, particularly the environmental ones) to get more out of the money in our pocket in the present.

This is a relatively obvious truth, but as these past months of economic squeeze have only highlighted the idea of good food and wine as “luxury”, it seems poignant to discuss it. Does economic pressure mean environment consciousness goes out the window? Can we focus on the two things at once? And if we can’t, how can we ask those that can never afford it, to do it? 

This article in CivilEats, looking at some of the regenerative practices in vineyards, also got me thinking. Specifically looking at the impact of cover crops, grazing animals and deep-rooted perennials (including the vines themselves), the article suggests that these vineyards can be among the greatest carbon sinks – especially when compared with other mono-crops. They are also better able to guard against the vagaries of the weather we are facing through the climate crisis.

“The viticulture sector is notoriously one of these ‘bubble sectors’ that stays within itself and isn’t talking as much to the rest of the ag community … We’re talking about animal integration, we’re talking about integrating trees, we’re talking about integrating other crops. It really is regenerative agriculture, even if we might take a viticulture lens … and that when you mix different practices together, it actually increases the benefits.”

On the flip side of that, there was this post from Alice Feiring (and the ensuing argy bargy in the comments) about the state of things in Beaujolais. “I mean, dead is dead, and then it gets even more dead.” Are these, Alice asks, the producers screaming at the EU to not take their glyphosate away?

It is a pretty familiar tale, the shift in the 50s away from polyculture and into chemical farming, the subsequent loss of labour, the 30 or 40 “productive” years that followed and now the fallout (coupled with shifting weather patterns). Disaster. Add to that, the Beaujolais has many of its own unique attributes: the goblet trellesing and hilly parcels in particular. The post and its comments are strewn with fun little facts about the region and its farming. Fascinating if you want to know more.

(Inidentally, I remember feeling the same way when I was there in 2016 – have a look at this comparison.) 

I feel like all of this is linked. I feel that “natural wine” (insert here your preferred term and subsequent rules) is the most obvious and tactile example of how things can be. I feel like its ahead of its time and yet buried deep in our agrarian traditions (maybe particularly because it’s buried in those traditions). I feel like the conversations and arguments of definition and semantics are actually what it’s all about. These are my people. These are our people. This is culture - culinary and otherwise. These are products we should be proud to sell and stories we should be honoured to share.

Producers:

- Pecora won the RAS President’s Medal this year. This award is designed to look at the triple bottom line for the producer, not just their product. Michael and Cress are doing such a wonderful job, not just in their cheese, but for their land, the sheep and their family – do seek them out. 

- Feather and Bone are running a very excellent series of producer thoughts about the supermarkets:

Vince Heffernan at Moorelands talked about “enoughness” (a word and concept that has rolled around my mind ever since) - “Yes I love good food, but it can be something as simple as amazing mint I grow in my farm garden, or a lemon or tomato or the stellar Texel lamb I produce. Quality matters, but how it is produced matters too and the quality usually comes from the way it’s produced. Is it good for the planet? Are we focused on reducing Greenhouse gases? Are we aware of the damage that certain agricultural practices do to our land and water and the others that share it - the flora and fauna?”

Andrew and Therese Hearne of Near River – “Whilst society’s interest in stories has become voracious and quick with the advent of social media and AI generated newsletters, the stories behind the food you eat and the connection that provides … are all part of the fabric that builds culture, and food is the very basis of that, continually evolving. Sharing those stories, whether gathered around a table with friends and family, or over a quick snack at the kitchen bench, will always be one of life’s simple pleasures, and it gives us great joy to play a small part in that.”

Belinda and Jason Hagan of McIvor – “… the supermarket system offers very cheap food which makes us, by contrast, look really expensive … The TRUE cost of food production in a regenerative, respectful, environmental, wholesome manner is higher than what you’ll pay in a supermarket. But you’re not just paying for a product, you’re investing in your health and a better food future.”

- Joost Bakker has been doing his thing, this time building a (hemp-walled, fire-proof, green-roofed, rain-water-collecting, closed-loop) house for his mother. Whenever the world feels a bit too much for me, I check back in with his projects. They always makes me feel like change is possible. The exception being his plastic-waste-to-ethanol project. A travesty. If you’re looking for a life challenge …

Restaurants:

- Read Ruth Reichl on Zuni Cafe, one of the all-time classics in San Fran, or The New Yorker about the restaurant (buffet!!) cooking the classics in France. I love the former for the quiet achievements – 45 years of those pickles, the celery, parmesan and house-cured anchovy apero, that roast chook and its woodfired oven; I love the latter for its preservation of the classics (indeed, of culinary culture), for its brazenness and, while not in keeping with the rest of this issue, I’m giving them marks for decadence. “Les Grands Buffet takes a panoramic view of the French classics, ranging from the palace-hotel repertoire (lièvre à la royale, peach Melba) to bourgeois cooking (veal blanquette, bœuf bourguignonne), regional specialties (quenelles de brochet, pissaladière), and rustic dishes (snails, frogs’ legs). “More than a gargantuan orgy, … [it’s] a sort of conservatory of the nation’s gastronomy.” It is the only time I have ever thought to reconsider my no-buffet rule.

Should we include the vigneron pick here too?

Words:

- For a gentler view on French culinary canon, find a way to watch The Taste of Things/La Passion de Dodin-Bouffant. Somewhat akin to sharing a meal with Brillat-Savarin, it’s a meandering stroll through the cultural romance of food – the antithesis to The Bear, but every bit as fabulous. There’s more enoughness – “le bonheur, c’est de continuer à désirer ce que l’on possède” - and the delightful idea of being in the “autumn of our lives”. It’s exquisitely shot and set in the most perfect kitchen you have ever seen. (That diamond-shaped sole-poaching dish was a(nother) spectacular challenge to this enoughness palaver.)

- Aaron Ayscough had a little review of Le Dilettante, a 2021 book written by Bertin and Chavalier in conversation with natural wine making legend (and recluse) Jacques Neauport. “My own favorite passages were those in which the authors elicit detailed, practical natural winemaking techniques, of the kind that is rarely recorded anywhere. (For the simple reason that modern conventional winemaking texts do not contain them, while even older winemaking texts that predate modern enology often describe rather large-scale maneuvers aimed at cave cooperatives.)” He had a good crack at some of the questions, and the genre of natural wine publications in general (his own aside, obvs) and the complications of learning to work with nature and traditional wisdom when so much of that is still passed down verabally, often shoulder to shoulder.

- That leads nicely to the rather excellent looking poster being released this week by Mathieu Lapierre on carbonic maceration. Taking inspiration from those excellent French education posters, he has explained the process as Domain Lapierre use in their winery. I like.

- Finally, I stumbled upon this very pretty illustration of rewilding and integration in the vineyard via Chiara of Emidio Pepe. I noticed Katie at Maison Maenad also planting trees this past month. People are doing good things.

il mensile - February 2024

Written with Giorgio de Maria Fun Wines

“Our food system is broken, but I think hospo is a bit broken too.” - Alex Elliot-Howery, Cornersmith

To be fair, poor Alex sounded a little broken too.

It makes me so sad to watch restaurants and cafes struggle through the inevitable belt tightening. So many small businesses engaged in feeding, nurturing and educating – not just their customers but their own staff too. These are bastions of our culture and community.

I’m also convinced the restaurant, food and wine industry can be the trojan horse for tackling many of our environmental woes, if we just let them. I feel like there’s an army of chefs, somms, FOH and producers who are prepared to mobilise – and yet we’re asking them to march on an empty stomach.

We need to be part of the solution, otherwise who will?

Producers:

- At the vanguard of that environmental battalion, there was (unsurprisingly) some further discourse over the question of invited guests and “intruders” and otherwise at La Dive. I have picked four for you to ponder:

“The hunt for the great flaw villain. Yet another discourse very much of Our Time. To castigate the neighbor who works organically but who is too extreme in his vinification; when beside him the guys working conventionally flirt with poison and even receive support from the state.” Anjou vigneron Romain Verger, via Facebook

“Free wines, living wines, that’s it. Impose nothing. Know how to wait for wines when they don’t taste good. Vignerons and retailers, let’s educate our clients to have patience. Don’t bend to the demands of sommeliers and wine bar merchants who want free wines without ‘deviance’ that stay intact for two days in open bottles so as not to lose the margins on even one glass. If you ‘natural’ vignerons don’t resist that, the market for natural wine will become standardized. For me it’s already well down that path.” Strasbourg caviste Jean Walch of Au Fil du Vin Libre, via Facebook

“If we want zero [additives], we have to be ready to accept light imperfections… Make-up is used to mask flaws, but do we really need it?” Alsace vigneron Christophe Lindenlaub, via Facebook

“It amazes me that, as a community that mostly agrees that all the hard work is done in the vineyard, we end up arguing about details in the winery. What’s in the wine only affects the drinker. What’s used in the vineyard affects the whole ecosystem.” - Oliver Stevenson-Goldsmith

- At the other end of the spectrum, Coles are faking it. No-one can be that surprised, can they? These wines are often yeasted, enzymed, acidified, heavily sulfited, fined, filtered, degassed; from vineyards treated with synthetic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers – who’s shocked they’re fabricating a story to go with?

- Perhaps more shocking is this allegation that wines are being sent around the world having been coravin-ed (a new verb?). A lot of finger-pointing here, but the accusation is of either quality control, sampling, or worse of rebottling. This is the second attack on Versus, the first from @jura_wine, the second via Korean somm @channy_son.

Restaurants: 

- Is the hospitality industry on the brink of collapse? I know everyone can hear the little boy and his wolf or the little chicken and her sky in that statement: FBT, GST, RBT, Covid. We have had this conversation over and over.

And yet  …

With only 19% reaching their profit margin of 10% (!!) in 2021, we’re back asking the question, we’re back questioning the system.

“[Cornersmith is] where we could get people thinking about food … not in a preachy way, but in a conversational way. It’s always been an education place (even if we didn’t realise at the time). Good times, but also education … I don’t feel like Cornersmith has been a failure by any means, but I really thought I could change things and I now don’t feel like that because I think it needs bigger systemic change.”

This is the very eloquent (and intelligent) Alex Elliot-Howery, in her fabulous podcast interview with Dani Valent. The economy and, perhaps, our way of life is making it nigh on impossible for hospo to be viable. “We don’t want to cut corners, because we know that’s what it means on a bigger scale – but I feel like it needs to be tiny, tiny or a bigger restaurant group – I don’t know how small business survives. And I worry that we then lose diversity …” She’s right, so much of the magic happens in the middle – the people who are supporting a handful of people and families, maybe five maybe 20 (by this, I mean their staff – it’s an incredible achievement to have your work/business support the lives of others).

There’s also that desire to do good - to create something that can help the environment, that can fix a little of our broken food system - also tangled up in this mess. The messengers and advocates for solutions will be the collateral damage in that loss. We can’t have that.

“I don’t feel it’s an individual’s responsibility. What I do think is that raising awareness is everybody in the hospitality industry’s responsibility; whether that’s to the complexities of the industry or to the ingredients they’re using, or how to reduce packaging, or whatever thing they’re interested in. We need leaders in hospitality, like all industries need leaders. We’ve all got this one life and if you don’t try to make change or have purpose what’s the fucking point?”

I particularly liked this from Ben Liebmann (former COO at Noma for many years and is now consulting to food businesses in Sydney) found in Dani’s article on the topic: “Why aren’t we having a conversation around GST relief on hospitality? Why aren’t we having a conversation about fringe benefits tax, about rebates and offsets to future-proof the industry around ESG [environmental, social and governance pillars] or technology? … The film industry gets offsets and tax breaks, but I would argue hospitality is far more impactful in terms of employment, a sense of community, and a place for changemakers. This industry is vital, more important than ever.”

- Over in WA, Max woo-ed me again. Another charming, thoughtful review of a humble restaurant (“If you’re looking for an example of what commitment to craft and half-a-century of muscle memory tastes like, go directly to Yip.”) Outside the square and yet so worthy, he really is nailing his own brief (I daresay, he’s also nailing Alex’s above, too).

I wanted everything, but particularly these: “… the dumplings’ delicate skin metamorphises, its golden, barely-there skin disintegrating in the mouth like a communion wafer. I can’t remember the last time I had my mind blown by a dish with a per-unit cost of less than $1.50 …” I miss dumplings so much Jimmy and I have taken to skipping the “y for yum cha” page in Alphabetical Sydney to alleviate the heart ache.

- Besha’s review of Gerald’s Bar also tickled. Same ideas, different state. The small, the incubators, the regulars. “How to score such a place with numbers and hats? It’s practically impossible. I’ll assign the points and let them mean what they say, but for the record, I think institutions like this are priceless, unrankable, above the fray. I can’t imagine Melbourne without Gerald’s, and I hope I never have to.”

Words:

- There is an interesting article in this month’s Feiring Line on the use of natural sulphur, “the real stuff - yellow, odiferous, straight from the volcano” (as opposed to the petrochemical-derived version conventionally used in winemaking). After much experimenting the product is now available in pellet form in France. The article quotes a few winemakers willing to talk about using it (and a handful of others wishing to remain anonymous due to the fact that it is “not exactly legal in the EU”).

Burgundian Thibault Liger-Belair started toying with it in 2014: “the natural sulfur wine was brighter, clearer, and cleaner and it did a better job of preserving the grape’s expression,” he said, particularly in comparison to those with petrochemical sulphur, that were flatter and less interesting. He also noted he could use less of it. Friend and fellow-adopter Charles Lachaux of Vosne said the wine acted more like a sulphur-free wine. Now, according to Feiring, there is a swarm of users in Burgundy.

The controversy, Feiring notes, doesn’t end with the legality of putting it in the bottle: “Sulfur mining is dangerous and the conditions for the miners can be deplorable. The largest source of the element comes from Mount Ijen in Indonesia - which often gets into the news for the abuse of workers - and it seems difficult to trace the element’s origins. Poutays [producer of this sulfer pellet form] claims he gets his sulfur from alternative deposits in Italy or Poland.”

Feiring concludes: “This winter, a rumor spread that a Burgundy winemaker had been busted. Trying to verify that has been impossible. The secrecy is the major reason reporting this story has taken years. But finally I just said, to hell with it, I’m going to tell you what I’ve learned even though few people want to go on record.

“Acknowledging the ethical and legal concerns, I’m fascinated by the practice,” concludes Feiring, “the debate and the trend. I would love to see this studied in the laboratory. But meanwhile, the contraband will continue.”

- Finally, for something a little less controversial, a little more ubiquitous, nerd out on frozen peas here.

il mensile - January 2024

Written with Giorgio de Maria Fun Wines

Last week the rumbling began. As the ancient, battered tractors ambled their way down the highway the dissent also snuck its way into conversations at every bar, over every pastis. They fanned out around Paris (and indeed Marseille, Lyon and many other cities of France, Germany, Belgium and beyond), and with “military precision” organised shifts for the farmers - spit-roasting sanglier, drinking red wine, sleeping in giant hay beds - all the while protesting their right to make a living.

They’re calling it operation “Siège de Paris”, evoking previous efforts of the infamous (Atilla the Hun, the Vikings, Jeanne d’Arc, Henri IV all laid siege to Paris at one point or another). And yet the French have a very romantic view of their paysans - a word that literally translates to peasants but is probably more closely tied to paysage (landscape). It is estimated only 1-2% of the population are working paysans, however the French are very keen to assure you their father or grandfather was a paysan. It is true that industrialisation came late and proceeded slowly in France, but the number of active paysans has diminished rapidly these past decades.

This is not their first rodeo. That connection to the land is a great sense of national pride and the affection for the paysans has been seen in the warm reaction of the public this past week, but also of the politicians: less of the water cannons we see for those pesky environmentalists and more politicians stopping by to boire un canon.

For once I don’t feel like this is just the French putting up a protest for the sport. The issues are complex, serious and timely: a growing gap between the price paid at the farm gate and the price demanded at the supermarket; the pressures of rising inflation and the war in Ukraine, leading to reduced ag subsidies; all the while ratcheting up demands on these paysans to make changes to meet quite lofty (and important) climate goals. Add in the EU’s desire to keep borders open, thus flooding the local market with products that are not necessarily required to comply to the same environmental standards (hello Spain) and voila, a beautiful melange of antique tractors rumbling down the freeway.

The world is paying attention, shining a spotlight on our broken agricultural systems. The rising global temperature and increased natural disasters are brightening that spotlight. Changes need to be made and maybe ag is a good place to start?

Economies of scale have been the enemy of clean farming. Many farmers find themselves on a treadmill – more chickens for smaller profits, more fertiliser to get the same yields, more antibiotics to protect against new disease. Making a living is not easy, income is low even if capital may be high (cue the temptation to sell up and sell out). Throw in unpredictable seasons and exacerbated natural disasters and you have this cataclysm (high farmer suicide a horrid testament to this).

Changes need to be made, but I don’t think it’s as simple as demanding an immediate return to organics. The soil is dead. It is going to take years of tiny yields, labour, unprofitable crop rotation, healthy inputs etc to build up life in those soils again. It is work that has to be done – for the land, for biodiversity, for our health – and in many ways we are all complicit in the problems. We will need to be part of the solution.

Solidarity and support, patience and empathy. These paysans are not the enemy, even if their farming does not yet conform to our ideals. (It’s important to keep in mind that their great-grand-parents’ probably did. This is but a 70/80-odd year glitch of hectic fertiliser, antibiotic and pesticide use. A blip, if we help support those that are willing in the transition back.)

Now, more than ever, eating is a political act, but I’m not so sure about throwing soup on the Mona Lisa. We need bread for all, and roses too.

Producers:

Holy Goat, Australia’s most influential (and wonderful) cheese makers, have announced the end of their cheese production. When we talk about best practice in land regeneration, animal husbandry and the incredible effects that can have on the flavour and quality, you would be hard-pressed to find a better example than the work of these two women. Their goats’ milk cheeses reflected the seasons and the grasses well before any raw-milk cheeses were allowed to be produced in Australia. They showed us what was possible, even within Australia’s administrative straightjacket. They taught us so much, provided so much joy at the table. They will be sorely missed.  

South Australia’s Inkwell Wines are offering a tonne of their A-grade shiraz grapes to handful of winemakers, with the view to hack the future of shiraz. The idea is to see what would happen in the hands of five different early career winemakers, who were all provided the same grapes and the same mission – to make something new and interesting (minimal intervention, of course) with Australia’s most grown grape variety. A judging panel headed up by Mike Bennie will help analyse the results.

Over the weekend winemakers and drinkers converged in the Loire for La Dive Bouteille. ‘Tis the season for the natural wine salons over here, dredging up the traditional discourse as to what should or should not be included. Sylvie Augereau, journalist/author/winemaker/organiser of La Dive, set the cat among the pigeons when she wrote to invitees:

“Merci encore de garder vos cuvées un peu trop barrées à la maison, pour ceux qui croient que les vins vivants c’est forcément déviants… On est vraiment pas là pour alimenter ce discours dangereux. Il y a des intrants qu’on préfère à certains intrus !”

“A reminder to please keep your overtly crazy cuvées at home, for those who believe that natural wines are by nature deviant… We’re not here to fuel this dangerous discourse. There are some additives that are preferable to certain intruders!”

(This is my translation, a bit of a deviation from Aaron’s. It’s a tricky translation/interpretation, but important, as it the words that created the melodrama! NB from Sylivie, the word “additives” was to imply minimal sulfitage and the addition of yeast nutrients during fermentation, while “intruders” was used to take in brettanomyces, mousiness, and spikes in volatile acidity etc.) 

Cue winemakers giving up their slot, others talking on the condition of anonymity etc etc. Aaron Ayscough has the full story, which is always a cracker wherever you sit. In fact, I’m quite sure without the constant re-hashing of this philosophical argument they’d all get a little bored.

Restaurants:

Mads Refslund’s new restaurant Ilis was reviewed in The New Yorker by Helen Rosner. It all felt like a bit of a piss take, hard to fault the food, but hard to love it also? “There’s a bit of Noma’s DNA at Ilis, in the audacity of its creative ambition, and the reverence it has for cooking as a form of art. But where Noma, at least in those early years, was all about anchoring the ephemerality of food in concrete notions of place and time, Ilis seems to be committed, body and soul, to abstraction. “Mads loves the idea of using part of an animal as the tool to eat it,” a chef-cum-server said as she laid down a mousse of giant whelk with chive oil and a buttery foam. The mixture had been piped into the whelk’s own shell, and was presented with a spoon whose bowl was made from the whelk’s dried foot. Are there giant whelks swimming around New York? Is there something profound about making a whelk taste, quite pleasingly, like sour-cream-and-onion chips?” 

At the other end of the spectrum, one of Australia’s nicest food journos, Max Veenhuizen, has taken the reins for Good Food in WA. His first review gave 15/20 (and a hat) to Big Don’s Smoked Meat – an American barbecue restaurant in a former auto-wreckers opened one day a week. This tiny restaurant vibe is growing in Oz (). A space to watch.

Brico has opened in Melbourne. The restaurant/wine bar is situated in the building that once housed Tansy’s, one of Melbourne’s cult restaurants of the 80s and 90s. This is the kind of place I want to eat. The two couples at the helm (Josh Begbie and Robyn Nethercote along with Phil Bracey and Tegan Ella Hendel) met while working in some of London’s favourites: P.Franco! Bright! Brawn! Simon Ball-Smith, formerly of Public Wine Shop is heading up the kitchen. "We have a similar menu to a lot of the restaurants we would go to around the world, and it’s a representation of [any] one of those wine bars," says Bracey. “We’re not necessarily interested in trying to create wild and new flavours. [Brico] very much sticks to the classics.”

Words:

Are you reading Ruth Reichl’s substack La Briffe? Beautifully written, thought-provoking, rich in historical and cultural context, often delicious. Just this past month there was offal and April (Bloomfield) – both excellent. It’s one of few that religiously get opened here.

Another worth reading, Canadian-born, Jura-residing, winemaker Katie Worobeck wrote about the culture of conviviality at the table in France: “It becomes less about the actual eating and more about the luxury of spending so much time around a table with the same people. The art of hospitality is really about caring for others: accepting them, nurturing them, listening to them. It feels like a uniquely human experience that the sharing of food can be imbued with so much meaning.” It was a simple concept that gave me pause to think – she’s right, why rush away? You can hear Katie in conversation with Aaron Ayscough here, or read some thoughts we penned in our last Il Mensile.

My lovely friend Harriet (and a treasured editor of Recipes for a Lifetime of Beautiful Cooking) has been writing of her experiences in France in A Journal. Recently she wrote a romantic ode to returning home, the perfumes and personalities that are bathed in new light after a year away. I recognised so much in those words.

Finally, I read this passage in Patience Gray’s Honey from a Weed the other day. It’s a good reminder of the swings and round-abouts, of the old ideas becoming new ideas:

“Some growers … announce the sale of the wine they drink themselves by hanging a bushel of bay leaves above the door. This is the most direct way of getting a demijohn of unadulterated wine; having nevertheless taken the trouble beforehand to discuss its trustworthiness in the piazza. The surplus grapes of the vineyards in our neighbourhood have in recent years been booked some months ahead by individual buyers who want to make sure of un vino sincere; ‘sincere’ being understood as not watered down or chemically preserved from turning into vinegar … The distinction of the wine receiving such praise is that it was made with good health and conviviality in mind, rather than sales. Its production is not maximised and consequently its preservation and amiability need no deceit. For adulteration always came in the train of overmuch acumen …”

The debate has raged for decades, long live the debate!