One of the great things about wine shows is that they invert the normal order of things. Like being on holiday, at a wine show it is not only perfectly acceptable but actually encouraged to get onto it before noon: That’s when the people who know and love their wine show up to taste and talk to winemakers and stock their cellars. After lunch, it’s all neck tattoos and tire-kickers looking for a cheap skinful.
Such was the case at Sunday’s excellent inaugural (and hopefully not last) Eveleigh Uncorked wine-cheese-and-food truck festival. A great event in the old railshed, it was mostly (exclusively?) NSW and ACT wines, and we Pricks were glad to see old favourites (hi, Mrs Marsh!) and make some new discoveries including Helm Wine‘s great Cabernets and Long Rail Gully‘s silky, St Emilion-like 2007 Merlot.
Also ran into plenty of mates, like local gastro-political power couple Shayne Mallard and Jesper Hansen (most recently seen on Maeve O’Meara’s Food Safari):
Skål!
After the festivities, and with the Prick’s birthday coming up next week, we made a surprise detour to pick up a bit of an unexpected gift:
The Prick been berry, berry good this year…
More on adventures with this beauty, which replaces a long-loved but ultimately unstable ghetto sous-vide rig, over the days and weeks to come. Thanks, Mrs Prick!
Prick With A Fork 
G’day Mr P. I’m only a recent follower of your blog, which I do find most enjoyable.
Always a little puzzled though why people need to compare our wine to, in this case, froggy wine. Can’t we celebrate our own uniqueness (and if you like, terroir) and ability to make a bloody good drop?
Mr Colman, thank you for your thoughtful note, and I appreciate your point: Australia makes a lot of spectacularly good wines, wines which are often unique expressions of our own style, and we should not be shy in “owning” that.
In the case above I highlighted the similarity to Bordeaux only because merlot is a grape that that region really lays claim to (and you don’t really think of merlot as having a particular Aussie pedigree like our ways of dealing with cab-sav or shiraz or pinot), and this particular bottle brought that to mind. Likewise I might favourably compare a white Burgundy to a really great WA chardonnay, or hold various local shirazes up against wines of the Rhone. While the Pricks love their Aussie wines, and their old and new world wines, there’s certainly no cultural cringe here!
Well, Mr. P, I do agree that the words merlot, Australian and great are not often found in the same sentence and I’m pleased that you compare froggy to aust on occasion rather than au contraire. May your new sous vide gadget immerse you in hours of contentment and help supply your faithful readers with new and interesting anecdotes chez chiefprick
Dear Mr Prick,
Congrats on the Breville Sous Vide machine, I will be interested to hear how you go with it in due course,
I tell you what, that part of Redfern has changed since I lived down that end of Wilson St back in the early to mid 80’s.
By the way, truffle season starts in a month, and I’ll try to send some in your direction again.
About to post a report on its first outing. It’s a great device, I resisted for far too long for a variety of esoteric reasons. And you remain, sir, a gentleman, a scholar, and PWAF’s best-looking commenter as well.
If Mrs Prick had any brains, she should have got you a new ironing board and green-energy saving washing machine for you to use.