A Dinner to Welcome Sydney Festival Visitors to Melbourne

We began with a very special Welcome Dinner hosted by Victoria Branch member Beverley Sutherland Smith. Beverley runs a cooking school in Melbourne, spends a few weeks each year running cooking classes in France and caters to those who are seeking a gourmet function with a special edge. She was the perfect host for this special Welcome Dinner.  Ten visitors and 16 members gathered in her home for a spectacular dinner on October 29.

Beverley is also a keen gardener, with a garden that is open to the public once a year as part of Victoria’s Home Garden Scheme. So we were lucky to begin by sipping our Champagne (1996 Vilmart Cuvee Creation) as we wandered around her garden and enjoyed delicious canapés (Oysters two ways and Spanish Croquetas).

We matched our first entrée, an out-standing mushroom consommé with a mushroom ragout, with really delicate but intense flavours, with an aged Clouet Rose Champagne – a divine dish and a match made in heaven.

We followed with ‘Baby John Dory in a butter, lemon and caper sauce’, so perfectly cooked. We matched it with a Girardin Meursault-Perrieres from 2002 and also thought we should show off a serious Australian Chardonnay to our international guests, so included the 2000 Giaconda Chardonnay.  But they clearly preferred the Meursault!

We moved on to a third entrée – a Duck pie (marinated margret of duck braised in red wine and herb sauce in a butter puff pastry).  Matched with a 1999 Burgundy (Dominique Laurent La Richemone NSG) and a Pinot from New Zealand (2006 Valli Gibbston from Central Otago), this was another astonishing dish and we continued to marvel at Beverley’s ability to plate 26 dishes so perfectly cooked. We were all having a great deal of fun and were delighted that our visitors joined in on the wine and food discussion with such great enthusiasm. John Crossingham from Niagara was an eloquent and decidedly entertaining speaker on the Pinots.

Our main course was a rack of lamb with a wattleseed and herb crust, served with a potato gratin, matched with a pair of Australian Cabernets – Victoria’s 2000 Mount Mary Quintet (generally considered to be Victoria’s top Cabernet) and the Lake Folly Cabernet from the Hunter Valley, NSW. The lamb arrived in perfect condition, beautifully pink and again, remarkably consistent from plate to plate. The quality and consistency of the dishes was an amazing accomplishment for a home dinner for that number of guests. The wine of the bracket was definitely considered to be the Lake’s Folly – very much more approachable at this stage of its evolution than the Quintet.

We finished with a very pretty dessert, Beverley’s signature checkerboard mosaic of chocolate, vanilla and fruit based ice cream served with berries and accompanied with a 1997 Coutet Sauternes. Simply outstanding presentation.  We had dined so well that the fabulous 1977 Grahams Port served with coffee was a bit lost on the group, though Peter Joyce was determined to do his best!

It was a great evening of fellowship and camaraderie with our international guests, enhanced by rotating our guests from table to table with each new course so that we all had a great chance to get to know one another. We all felt greatly privileged to have shared in such a wonderful evening of food, wine, and old and new friends.

Please view the menu here.