Wine and drinks writer Max Allen teams with his friend – food writer Richard Cornish for an afternoon of banter with The Tales of Oysters and Champagne. You’ll find them at the Stanley Pub on 22nd August.
Max spoke to The Write Drop for our At The Bar series.
MY CITY
I moved to the canelé-belt of inner West/North Melbourne a couple of years ago from the suburbs and feel right at home in the heart of the city. Queen Vic Market’s a block away, I can walk everywhere, and I’m surrounded by a staggering array of excellent purveyors of coffee, pastries, pho, wine, pastries, beer, pastries, bread, and pastries – and did I mention the pastries?
FAVOURITE FOOD MEMORY
Working in a bottle shop in the UK in the early 1990s, I found – in a rival shop – a bottle of 1980 Penfolds Grange on a dusty forgotten shelf with a price tag of twenty quid. I cooked a dinner at home with a couple of foodie friends, and while I can’t remember exactly what we ate I vividly remember the first mouthful of the wine – the wondrous, uncommon weight of the it on my tongue – and a surge of excitement that once that glass was finished, I could pour myself another. Then, just as we sat down to eat, the lights went out. A mid-winter power cut. Outside the window the whole town was silent, shrouded in a thick blanket of snow. So, we lit some candles and drank the Grange. And soon the bottle was empty.
FAVOURITE BAR
I am contractually obliged to say Gerald’s in Carlton North – well, not contractuallyobliged so much as passionately inclined. I have been drinking in and writing about Gerald Diffey’s establishments since the 1990s – from The Kent to the Locarno to Brooks, to his eponymous watering hole in 2006 – and a couple of years ago helped put together his rollicking memoir of a lifetime in hospitality, Beggars Belief: Stories from Gerald’s Bar. What do I drink? Whatever Gerald or Mario suggest, of course.
DRINK THAT DESCRIBES YOU
Proper farmhouse scrumpy cider – because it’s full-bodied, boozy, it’s steeped in heritage and history but is a bit messy around the edges, loves roast pork with crackling, and is originally from the West Country in the UK.
BEST HANGOVER CURE
Yum cha and bottle-aged riesling. Then back to bed.
BEST INTERNATIONAL BAR
Gerald’s Bar in San Sebastian – again, I’m not contractually obliged: I just love this place. It’s the embodiment of hospitality and good food and wine – and could also be the answer to ‘Favourite Food Memory’: my 50th birthday lunch here – roast pork and crackling, and bottles of Rioja from 1968, my birth-year (a terrible vintage pretty much everywhere around the globe except northern Spain) – was one of the all-time great meals of my life.
FAVOURITE WINE
Back in the 1990s and 2000s, my in-laws owned a winery in the Hunter Valley. Their winemaker previously worked for another big winery and in the late 70s he’d made a batch of ‘port’ that was accidentally overproof (more than 20 per cent alcohol). Many years later, after lurking in a corner of the big warehouse known as the ‘silver shed’, a pallet of this port was sold off by the winemaker’s old employer at a rock-bottom price – and my father-in-law bought the lot. Ever since, at family gatherings – birthdays, Christmas, New Year’s, funerals – bottles of ‘silver shed port’ have been dragged out and decanted and devoured. And in the 30 years that I’ve been drinking it, it has always tasted the same: full, rich, and warming. It will live forever – but I only have one bottle left in the cellar.
FAVOURITE WINERY
One of the first vineyards I visited when I arrived in Melbourne in the early 1990s was Craiglee, in Sunbury, just past the airport. It’s still one of my favourites and is a must-visit for anyone interested in Victorian wine. Founded in the 1860s, and run by the Carmody family since the 1970s, the place oozes history and personality: the original three-storey bluestone winery building is in use, and the labels still look like the ones used here in the 19th century. It’s not flashy, there’s no winery restaurant, and cellar door is only ‘generally open for tastings on the first Sunday of the month’ – I love that: ‘generally open’ – so it’s always best to phone ahead. The wines are great, the people are humble, and the place is stunning.
NEXT DESTINATION
Greece. I travelled around some of Greece’s many wine regions a few years ago and was blown away by the quality and diversity of the wines, especially those made from the country’s ancient grape varieties – particularly assyrtiko on the island of Santorini. I also felt strangely at home there, despite not being able to speak the language – maybe I was a Greek winemaker in a past life? I’m going back next year for a bit of island-hopping – and I can’t wait to discover more new grape varieties and new wines.
