Wanderlust Heaven!

Before leaving Adelaide Stephanie and I went and visited the Penfolds Magill Estate, which is a little winery (run by a massive corporation, of course) right in the hills above the city.  I can’t think of too many vineyards within city limits anywhere in the world…although I do seem to recall tasty diesel-flavored red in a puny plot in Paris’ Montmartre section.  The Magill Estate is where Penfolds’ famous Grange is created using Penfolds’ top 10% of grapes from their numerous Australian holdings.  The tour guide let us have a taste from a 2006 cask and, while quite young, it was very tasty.  Only goes for approximately $500 a bottle, if you’re interested.  Another good way to spend that sum is to have dinner at the Estate’s beautiful little restaurant, which overlooks Adelaide.  Must do that sometime.

The next day we went up to the Barossa Valley, which is probably Oz’s premiere grape-growing region, at least for shiraz and other reds.  And as you might expect, there are some high-end hotels and restaurants; Maggie Beers, a well-known Aussie cook/gourmand, has an eponymous restaurant there which we intended to visit.  We bopped around 4 vineyards, with Two Hands being our favorite.  This vineyard is only about 7-8 years old, and makes some delicious and playful wines.  We picked up some reds and also a nice bottle of sticky white dessert wine – a botrytis Semillon, if my memory is accurate.  But while the Two Hands wines were superb, what Stephanie and I will most remember is a random conversation she had with a woman who was also there (with her husband) tasting the wines.  I’m not sure how they started talking, but in any event this woman was a food snob of the highest order.  I hung back and watched, slack-jawed I’m sure, as the woman mentioned to Stephanie that she had visited Maggie Beers’s restaurant 3 times during the past day, and that she was disappointed because Maggie had removed some sort of fig ingredient from her pate/terrine/whatever.  She then switched tacks and acknowledged that old Maggie did have a wonderful pumpkin risotto recipe – cooked in a pot the size of a Volkswagen – that she (this woman) had managed to replicate by accident. 

All the while I was wondering what Stephanie was thinking – was she actually engaged in this discussion, or was she thinking that the woman was mad?  I can’t even imagine what my face must have been communicating, and the woman’s husband was skillfully skirting the entire session by gazing at wine bottles on the other side of the room.  When the topic of the pumpkin risotto success came up, though, Stephanie somewhat sarcastically told the fig-woman “good job!” and I could tell she was dying to escape – so I muttered some excuse and we got out of there without further mental damage.

From there we went to Maggie Beers’s place for lunch, and the fun began.  We did a quick recap of the tortuous conversation at Two Hands, and then launched into our own critiques of Maggie Beers’s food, and food in general.  “I do hope the quince frangipani tartlette is there, darling” I said, and Stephanie said that she preferred the duck sherry glaze with capsicum paste.  Of course, we were both neglecting to consider the pheasant plum and green peppercorn soufflé, but you can’t think of everything at times like these.  The fact that Stephanie is French allowed us to infuse our dialogue with the proper airs – names of food tend to sound rarefied when spoken with an overdone French accent. 

In fact, the food at Maggie Beers was excellent – and we did consume some snobbish products.  The porcini terrine and quince paste was unlike anything I’d ever had, the capsicum paste (really) was creamy and piquant (say that with a French accent), and the cheese selection was memorable.  We failed to note the missing fig, and didn’t notice that the pumpkin risotto wasn’t on the menu that day.  This has been a running joke since that day, and one of the highlights of my walkabout thus far.  That’s one of the best aspects of travel – you never quite know what sorts of hilarity will sneak up on you when you least expect it.

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