Winemakers who have consistently put up brilliant wines for 54 years need a break.
But did Rob take one?
No.
Last week was spent fishing with family, friends and our Charleston grapegrowers in the beautiful Venus Bay on Eyre Peninsula.
(Shout out to our fabulous group of Members who reside in Venus Bay who we did not contact – we’ll be hitting you up in October! Watch out!)
Great friends Glynn & Julia brought their fishing boat across from Tumby Bay.
Rob and co immediately threw themselves into boat fishing in the bay and surf fishing on some pretty wild western coastlines.
But About the Food:
A huge Australian Salmon was caught by our grapegrowers Kim & Michelle. This salmon guy needs to be bled immediately which Kim did.
Onlookers were incredibly rude about the potential enjoyability of an Australian Salmon eaten as is – so other-Moody-daughter-Emma (the non-Lucy) made up some exquisite fishcakes for us all. She used the leftover mash from the previous evening, with fresh flatleaf parsley and fresh lemon, lots of pepper and a little salt.
Heather made up a tartare from holiday ingredients – nice mayo, add chopped up cornichons or gherkins, parsley and lemon juice. She would have added finely chopped green olives if she had access.
Washed down with cold Somerled Fumé Blanc, cold Somerled Rosé, cold Almondcart Rosé from grapegrowers Kim & Michelle.
The following day there was *quite* the haul of Tommy Ruffs (‘tommies’ in the Moody world – otherwise known around Australia as roughies, Sea Herring and Australian Herring).
These were sensationally and quickly cooked by the winemaker for lunch.
He lightly floured them and tapped any excess off with Heather as his Assistante. They heated a bit of good quality oil and butter in a pan, and cooked whole til nice and crisp on the outside.
Somebody bought a huge amount of fresh hot chips from the kiosk and we washed all of that down with more of the same wines and – from memory – some nice fresh bread and lots of fresh lemon.
In between all the washing down of things, and the well-deserved naps, Heather & Emma both consumed 2 books each and say 2000 Sudokus.
It was a brilliant week of fishing, cheering the good catches, sulking about the bad catches, drinking, chatting, playing highly competitive dice-game Farkle, eating, walking, bird-watching and reading. An absolute delight.
In other news? Scroll down for the latest in cask wine news (only half joking) below some Venus Bay shots:
Barry Summersgill and family arrived on Saturday from Sydney and said hi.
Over a very long Somerled lunch and vino.
Rob & Barry started work at Wynns Winegrowers on the very same day and 1977 – Barry as chemist and Rob as Chief Winemaker – and their friendship has remained 100% in tact!
We made them pose in front of an old photo from that era – a huge newspaper spread featuring both men and other team members, proudly showing off a cask of wine.
These two men and their team were famous for creating the first silver-lined ‘bag in box’ wines, with the silver protecting the wine inside from fluctuations in heat and light.
The silver was really aluminium coating one of the plastic laminate layers of the bag. Prior to then, the plastic laminate was transparent.
And since, in those days, bag-in-box wine had a great deal more credibility than it does today, and was really great wine much of the time, protecting it from the elements was really important.
Every silver (aluminium) lined cask wine bag you see is because of them!
They actually happened, though, to spend most of their time producing some of Australia’s best Cabernets of the 1970s and 1980s.
Now that you know that, please remember to proudly tell your friends you know somebody famous!
