Events

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.

To provide visitors who are travelling on to Melbourne from the Sydney Festival with a look at Victoria's wine country, a small group will travel by bus from Melbourne to the Mornington Peninsula.  The first stop was at Hurley Vineyards for a tutored wine tasting, and then we proceeded for lunch to the acclaimed winery and restaurant 'Ten Minutes by Tractor'.  

Pinot Tasting at Hurley Vineyard

Victoria offers some very special wine country, especially the Mornington Peninsula for its Pinot Noir.  So it was essential that we show our visitors some of this country.

Hurley vineyard, owned and operated by Kevin Bell and Tricia Byrnes, makes some of the country’s best Pinots.

So we were delighted to be invited to take our visitors there for a tutored wine tasting.

About an hour and a half from Melbourne, we climbed aboard our mini bus at 10am to set off for the Peninsula.  The weather was uncharacteristically cold – we had to seriously rug up – Melbourne didn’t win any points for its weather that weekend!  Kevin Bell presented a private tasting tailored just to our group. Kevin is totally committed to making Pinot, is intently focused on terroir and works with each of his three parcels to craft three quite different but beautiful wines (Garamond, Lodestone and Hommage (a Swiss clone)).  Our guests felt honoured to have been part of such an enthusiastic, insightful and informative presentation of the Pinot grape in this part of Victoria.

Luncheon at Ten Minutes by Tractor

After our tasting at Hurley Vineyard, we climbed back into our bus and travelled to Main Ridge, 15 minutes away, to enjoy a quick tasting followed by lunch at Ten Minutes by Tractor.  Ten Minutes by Tractor is another Pinot producer on the Peninsula, named 10MXT as the three vineyards which are owned by this producer can be reached within ten minutes from one another by tractor.  10MXT also operates the classiest restaurant on the Peninsula so we simply had to present their degustation menu to our guests.

The presentation of the dishes on the plate was outstanding.

Our first dish, a beautiful rendition of asparagus and goats cheese, was a serious piece of artwork sprinkled with hazelnuts and decorated with fresh nasturtiums.

We also chose one of 10MXT’s three single vineyard Pinots to accompany the food – the 2008 McCutcheon Pinot. This is a delicious Pinot.

Being a Sunday the restaurant was full to the brim, but our two tables received an impeccable service level and the quality of each dish was difficult to fault – certainly a great restaurant to show off the Peninsula to our guests.  Be sure to ask for the degustation menu if you visit.

We were pretty happy when we climbed back into our bus for the return journey to Melbourne. I think we all felt as though we had enjoyed some great Victorian Pinot and made some pretty special friends.