As far as I am concerned the silly season is in full flight, the first week or so of November has been good for my wine education, lots of dinners, good wine and, usually, good company.
The following is is the first block of wines that I have tasted, there are a lot more to come!
Recently I attended Wine Exchange Asia’s 2015 Grosset Wines Singapore Dinner at Bar-A-Thym. Grosset Polish Hill is my favourite Riesling, so I was really looking forward to tasting some of the recent vintages and to meet Jeffrey Grosset for the first time.
Jeffrey taking us through the various wines and vintages, as well as explaining his reasoning for going organic well before it was fashionable.
Jeffrey is recognised as one of the best wine makers worldwide and was voted the inaugural Australian Winemaker of the Year by Gourmet Traveller WINE in 1998, is internationally recognised as one of the ‘Top 10 White Winemakers’ (Decanter, UK) and one of the ‘50 Most Influential Winemakers’ (Wine & Spirits, USA) in the world today.
It was my first time at Bar-A-Thym and I really enjoyed it, will definitely be back.
I recently attended another of Wine Exchange Asia’s great dinners, this one was the Elderton Vertical Wine Dinner at New Ubin Seafood Singapore.
Elderton Wines are one of my favourite wineries, the winery is in Nurioopta within the Barossa Valley, South Australia. The vineyard was originally planted in 1894 by the Scholz family from Germany. In 1916, the vineyard was purchased by Samuel Elderton Tolley whose family held onto the property until 1975 when they sold it to the Ashmeads, Lorraine and Neil. For the next 7 years they worked to restore the vineyard and started to produce wines in 1982. These days the winery is run by their sons, Cameron and Allister.
For more
Hi, this is my first submission in the MWWC. Monthly Wine Writing Challenge 19 – Choice. #MWWC19
Is being spoilt for “Choice” always a good thing?
Over the past few decades the increase of trade between countries and lowering of tariffs has meant an increase in the selection of wines available for consumption to a greater range than previously available. One of the benefits of this globalisation is being able to purchase a decent bottle of wine at an acceptable price in most places around the World, thankfully, including Singapore, is now possible.
This is great today, but is being spoilt for choice a good thing or will it create an issue in the future, could it lead to the decline in the availability of wines that are produced by smaller, artisinal producers?
Prior to globalisation and the advent of the internet, I was lucky enough to be living in Adelaide, South Australia, when I started my journey into the world of wine. Adelaide is in the middle of a number of Australian wine regions, where there are over 200 wineries within 2.5 hours driving, so I should have been able to find and taste wines crafted by some of the smaller producers from the nearby regions, but, unfortunately, this was not usually the case.
As the smaller wineries did not have the volume needed by the various distributors their wines were not often available anywhere other than at the cellar door. So a road trip was required, which is not a bad thing as long as you could find a designated driver and hope that someone in the party knew where to find the smaller, usually “hidden”, wineries or that you would take a wrong turn somewhere and find one, the latter was usually the way we found them, it was also the most fun.
SG50 National Day, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Republic of Singapore. Singapore’s National Day is 09 August.
As I had no chance to get into the Padang, where the official celebration was being held, I jumped at the chance to spend the night with friends at a bar in Marina Bay where we would have a prime location to watch the fireworks display and the fly-pasts / aerial displays. My comments about the bar are fairly negative, so I won’t mention the place, but it was one of the best locations to be to view the fireworks and aerial show.
SG50 National Day Parade Practice Part 2 contains photos that I took of the vehicles that took part in the Singapore National Day Parade. 177 vehicles took part in the parade, a very impressive array of vehicles and fire power, especially considering that a large number of the vehicles and weapons were developed and made locally in Singapore.
We were able to get up pretty close to all of the vehicles and take as many photos as we wanted, doubtful that most countries would allow the public to get as close or to take photos of their newest equipment, especially a brand new stealth boat, drones, underwater surveillance vehicles and even get up close to a battery of HAWK (Homing All the Way Killer) surface to air missiles.
Most of the troops seemed to be enjoying themselves, the only people who were not were the marshals who kept reminding us to get off the road or out of the way, can’t fault them as they were only doing their job to make sure we were not involved in an accident.
Even macho soldiers have to make sure that they are ready for the camera!
The vehicles in the parade were from all of the various branches of the Singapore Armed Forces including the Singapore Army, Republic of Singapore Navy and Republic of Singapore Air Force, as well as a Singapore Civil Defence Force contingent.
