Impressions from Jakarta – Social House

The centre of Jakarta

We were lucky that we got a seat in the first place. “Social house” was, as always, booked out. We had a great view of the fountain at the city centre, odered two pizza and two glasses of house Malbec, a drinkable red wine.

Social house menue

About food and wine

Pizza

Social house wine cellar

There is nothing more relaxing than having a meal with a good friend, in a location where my heart is: Jakarta. Glorious memories and good company. What can be better in life

Paolo Scavino – Barolo 2004 at Casa D’Oro, Kempinski Hotel, Jakarta

Unfortunately, the circumstances prevented me from writing a proper restaurant review of Casa D’Oro, an Italian restaurant at the Hotel Indonesia Kempinski in Jakarta. I have to go back, eat there and write a proper review. A friend of mine says it’s the best Italian gourmet dining in Jakarta. It’s chef de cuisine, Francesco Greco, is a well accomplished master of fine cooking being just awarded the “Best Chef of 2009 in Shanghai” award.

But I can write about the wine, we had with our quick dinner. I selected a ‘2004 Barolo’ by Paolo Scavino, from Piedmont, Italy and one of the best producers of Barolo in the world. Made from Nebbiolo grapes grown in the cool climate of the Piemontese hills at the foot of the Alps, this wine has a deep red colour and is characterized by an elegant nose. Dried roses, cherries, and plums can be tasted together with herbs and dusty vanilla notes. The long finish is very impressive. The wine is of medium-body, very smooth and very well balanced. Wine experts award it 91-92 Parker points. I thoroughly enjoyed this wine.

I am so happy that I had spotted this wonderful wine on the extensive wine list of the hotel. I can only highly recommend it. Moreover, the wine was very reasonably prized.

Sunday at the Yarra Glen Hotel

One of the great things to do on a weekend in the Yarra Valley is to attend one of the many life music events. I especially love the music on a Sunday afternoon at the Yarra Glen Grand Hotel. First of all the food is quite good and second the venue is very suitable for the occasion provided there is not too much wind rattling the tent in which the bands perform.

Moreover, the Yarra Glen Grand Hotel is a beautiful historic building, a landmark in Yarra Glen, with it’s tower which is visible from many parts of the valley, it really stands out.

We had lunch and eagerly awaited the Bob Starkie Band which was to play in the afternoon. Bob Starkie is well known in Melbourne. He used to be one of the members of the legendary Skyhooks in the 1970s, a cult band in Melbourne. One of their top hits was “Women in Uniform”.

But first came the food.

The food was hearty and very tasty, as the two pictures above show. The wines we had with it were excellent examples of the local wine culture.

We had a bottle of ‘2006 Mandala Chardonnay’ from the Yarra Valley and a bottle of ‘2005 Dal Zotto Barbera’ from Whitefield in the King Valley, a neighboring wine region with very good cool climate wines.

Both wines were excellent and very enjoyable. The 2003 vintage of the Dal Zotto Barbera was given 90 points. The Dal Zotto family with a proud Italian heritage is well known for their quality wines. Their Italian varietal wines made from Barbera, Arneis and Sangiovese grapes have won high acclaim. Also their prosecco is commendable. The high altitude of the King Valley and its cool climate seems to be very suitable for those Italian varietals.

Owned by the Smedly family, Mandala Wines is located just a few kilometers up the highway, north of Yarra Glen. The cellar door and restaurant (open for lunch Thursday to Sunday and dinner on Saturday evenings) used to be “Henkel Vineyard” but has been redone completely. I love the design of the label, a huge mandala, which changes colour on the website, and expresses the philosophy of the owner on life and wine-making.

Mandala Chardonnay

Dal Zotto Barbera

And then the music started. The Bob Starkie Band promised exciting entertainment. They did not disappoint playing many of the classical Skyhooks songs. It did not take long and the dance floor was crowded with rural folks moving and shaking. There is nothing better then a dance on a Sunday afternoon. It also makes sure that one is clear headed on a Monday morning. We had great fun. I can only highly recommend it to the accidental traveler. If in the Yarra Valley look out for live music events

Bob Starkie

Addresses:
Yarra Valley GRAND Hotel
Bell Street, Yarra Glen, VIC. 3775
Tel.: 03-9730 1230
int: +61 3 9730 2434
fax: 03 9730 2434
e-mail: hotel@yarravalleygrand.com.au
www.yarravalleygrandcom.au

MANDALA WINES PTY LTD
1568 Melba Highway Dixons Creek Yarra Valley Victoria 3775
Tel. +61 3 5965 2016
Fax: +61 3 5965 2589
e-mail: info@mandalawines.com.au
www.mandalawines.com.au

Dal Zotto Wines
Main Rd, Whitfield,
King Valley, Vic 3733 Australia
Tel.: +61-3-57 298 321
Fax +61-3 57 298 490
info@dalzotto.com.au
www.dalzotto.com.au

Hosting the vintner – with Timo Mayer at Patara in Bangkok

I admit, we take all our friends traveling through Bangkok to our favorite Thai restaurant if time permits. Patara is Thailand’s best restaurant and was awarded the corresponding prize for this achievement in 2009. We just love to dine there.

When Timo Mayer and his two daughters came through Bangkok we were pleased to have them for a couple of days and show them around. The Mayers’ came from Germany where Timo was helping with some wine-making in his native village near Stuttgart. He was also selling some of his Australian wine in various places (London for instance).

He was loaded with different bottles of very unique wines some of which we tasted together at various occasions. But one evening was reserved for fine Thai cuisine. Patara sent his tucktuck taxi service to pick us up from our home in Thonglor.

The colorful entrees

We decided that we would order the food and Timo would choose the wine. As always we started with the three colorful delicacies shown above. Somehow I had problems taking clear and crisps shots of the food that evening. But you can look up earlier posts in this blog where you can find some more photos of the various Patara signature dishes.

Happy diners

Timo selected the ‘2007 “Hugel” Riesling’ the classic wine from Hugel & Fils from Alsace. Jean Hugel, the senior vintner and wine-maker of this pioneer family of wine-making in Alsace was a legend and had passed away only in June this year.

I had never tasted their wines before and was very excited about the choice. Hugel and Fils maintain not only a very informative website but also an entertaining blog. I had visited Riquewihr, the picturesque Alsatian village where the winery is located many years ago (actually decades ago).

As a high-school student I had visited Alsace and its villages with my school and tasted my first Gewuerztraminer ever. A couple of years later I had seen a play at my “alma mater”: the Bonn University music and arts festival telling the story of the Alsace in three languages. After that my fascination with Alsace was complete. I had the chance to visit several times but mainly the north of the region. Our favorite destination was a restaurant, Au Cheval Blanc near Wissembourg but this is another story.

The ‘2007 Hugel Riesling’

The ‘2007 “Hugel” Riesling’ is a very fine wine, young and vibrant. 2007 was a good vintage because the grapes had the opportunity to ripen for the longest time ever and therefore the grapes were very healthy. As a consequence the wines show great elegance and balance. The wine is fruity with mineral notes, a typical Alsatian Riesling with the characteristic petrol note. I love Riesling with Thai food.

After we “demolished” the food

Our evening was great fun. The culinary delights of Thailand are just “breathtaking” for the palate. I can only highly recommend the restaurant. I love the atmosphere and the professional and friendly service.

We talked a lot about Timo’s German visit, his impressions, the adventures and, of course, wine. But when friends from afar visit, time flies. That’s how it was. Hours shrink to seconds and in a blimp of the eye it’s gone.

Address:
Patara Fine Thai Cuisine
375 Soi Thonglor 19 Sukhumvit 55, Klongtonnua Vadhana, Bangkok 10110
Tel. +66-2185 2960-1 Fax. +66-2185 2962
www.patarathailand.com

Climate change and grape varieties

Riesling grapes in Schoden, Saar, shortly before vintage 2009

Uff, I am reading in todays “Your Daily Wine News” newsletter that some of Australia’s top wine experts think that over the next 20 years climate change will be responsible for the decline of Shiraz and Chardonnay and the rise of varieties such as Vermentino, Arneis, Nebbiolo, Pinot Grigio and Viognier (some call them “alternative varieties”).

This is bad news for me and my own small vineyard. At Two Hills Vineyard we have concentrated on some of the traditional French varieties: Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Merlot and Chardonnay (first vintage in 2011 or 2012). Our fruit ripens usually well (if we do not suffer severe frosts) and shows a superior quality. But will that persist under the conditions of climate change?

I still remember vividly how I pulled out the 2 1/2 acres of Cabernet. it was hard work, wrapping a chain around every single vine and lifting the hydraulic of the tractor. I should have left them in, I guess. If temperatures rise in Glenburn, the drought persits, and/or we’ll have less percipitation in the future, Cabernet could have been the ideal variety for our spot. I ripped the vines out because the grapes would not fully ripen. At the moment we have sufficient water, our two dams are overflowing after years of drought but that might change quickly again.

Another issue is age, my age. At 55 I might still have a chance to enjoy some of the coming Chardonnay vintages but replanting would “cost” me many years of waiting. I could contemplate to plant on our second hill where we still have another 5-6 acres of space. Well, let us see what is going to come.

At least there is no politician who tells me what to do and chances are small that an elector such as Clemens Wenzeslaus of Saxonia, who changed the Mosel by instructing vintners to ripp out their red varieties and replant with Riesling, would appear on the Australian scene. However, danger is looming from the anti-alcohol lobby in Canberra which is working day and night to convince law-makers that the purchase of alcoholic beaverages needs to be made more costly for the consumer and profitable for the taxmen.

Halloween – biscuit style

Lucy and Charlotte were busy in the kitchen. The twins produced “Halloween biscuits” (aren’t they beautiful?), which were sold at school for charity. Being a bit old-fashioned-continental Halloween does not mean anything to me. The cookies, however, I just love although there were none left for me so that I could taste them. What consoles me is that Charlotte did not get one either. Only the lucky Lucy bought the second last one, I heard.

Happy celebrations. Cheers

Restaurant review: Yi Yuan Restaurant, Peking Food in Taipei

After all the wonderful “island food”, I felt like something northern Chinese and therefore had suggested this type of cuisine to my friends, Jim, Chimei, and Tzu-Chin.

They choose the restaurant: Yi Yuan Restaurant it was called located in the The Westin Taipei Hotel in Taipei.

Its chef, Jordan Yang, is well known for its traditional Peking roast duck and his many new “incarnations” of other northern Chinese dishes. Yi Yuan roast duck is the signature dish of the restaurant and a must-eat.

Peking roast duck

The Chef doing his magic

During my years in Beijing, I had had the famous Chinese dish many times. Almost every visitor wanted to taste it at one time or the other with the result that in the end I often did not feel like roast duck at all. But now things are different. Living in Thailand exposes you to excellent duck dishes but the Beijing roast duck is very special.

To serve roast duck and carve it properly is a skill one has to be trained for. One also needs a very sharp knife. The very first bits were just the skin. Unfortunately, I have no clear picture of it but they were meant to be dipped in caster sugar and mustard (see the second picture below).

Beautiful duck meat

Caster sugar and mustard

More duck meat

The proper serve of duck ready wrapped

The “empty” duck, stripped off all its treasures

After the duck we had various side dishes, some with seafood, others of a more traditional northern China style and the banquet ended with a soup of course. All the food was just wonderful. We indulged in a most interesting conversation about food and the universe which leads nowhere, as we all know, but gives so much pleasure to the mind.

Thanks folks for taking me there.

We did not have any alcohol with our meal but sipped on green tea which was very refreshing. However, at the end of the hall stood a sideboard filled with various treasures and a mostly high percentage alcohol content. But nothing beats an original “gaoliang” made from sorghum as a digestive.

The whole range of Chinese liquors

If Taiwan is on your travel list and your taste buds long for a very special treat, drop in at the Yi Yuan Restaurant in Taipei, and indulge in roast duck and other “Pekinese” foods.

Address:
Yi Yuan Restaurant at the Westin Hotel
www.starwoodhotels.com

台北市台湾
3 区南京东路 133 号台北 104
+886 2-8770-6565

A pesto pasta with Alsatian Riesling

My homecoming was celebrated with a dinner featuring one of my favorite pasta dishes: a pasta al pesto. But it did not stop there. The basilico for the pesto sauce was grown on our terrace. Freshly harvested the leaves were processed with pine nuts and the best olive oil we could get hold of in Bangkok. The pictures below shows the different stages of the pesto-making process.

Basilico leaves

Healthy leaves of home grown Basilico

Pesto in the making

The fresh pesto sauce

I tell you this pasta was worth killing for. What ‘profumo’, goodness me, it filled our kitchen, the living room and transcended to the terrace where it filled my nostrils long before the dish arrived. We treasured every bite.

If you think that in the 1760s French cultural supremacy was so dominant that Italian cooking was considered totally inferior even by Italians. Local cooking had to have the coda, “”perfected in Paris” to be taken seriously. Today, every second top restaurant in Bangkok and indeed in all cosmopolitan world cities is Italian. That’s just amazing!

Linguine with pesto

We celebrated the reunion with a French Riesling from Alsace, a ‘2006 Les Princes Abbes, Domaines Schlumberger, Riesling’. The price was a bit on the high end for us. TBH 1,600, about 32 Euro (or US $ 48), from our local super market is quite some money. That it sells for about US $ 20 in California somehow consoled me. We thought that life is just too short to waste it with drinking cheap wine and the occasion warranted something special, and special this Alsatian Riesling was.

This wine is just a wonderful specimen of Alsatian Riesling and it went very well with the pesto pasta. The fresh and fruity wine with aromas of citrus, lime and lemon and some floral notes, opened our taste buds wide. The wine has character and shows its typical Alsatian traits with some refined and not overpowering petrol notes. Alcohol is 12%, and just right. The finish is pleasantly vibrant but not overly long.

Fifty five

Back street near Houhai, Beijing

I was very luck to spend my 55th birthday with a good old friend in Beijing, China. He took me to a Hakka (“Kejiaren”) restaurant near Houhai where we had a jolly good meal and a jolly good time.

My Chinese name (Zhou Min-de) was given to me in 1983 by a Taiwanese farmer, Mr. Zhou, who was also Hakka (in Linlo Xian, near Pintung in Southern Taiwan).

We enjoyed the food and each others company. It was a mild August night, and the world seemed to be at peace. It was a double 5 festival for me, so to say. That must mean luck, prosperity and long, long life!

After the feast

PS: We had beers, of course, what else? It just came naturally.

Rioja in Taiwan

After teaching a full day I am usually exhausted and somehow empty. the best way to spend the evening is with a glass of wine. Jim and I, we marched into the wine shop just across the ICLPST in Taoyuan and shopped for some wine.

I choose a ‘2006 Tempranillo Beronia Rioja’ from Spain. What a nice wine this was; an “umpf” wine, as we call it in Australia. Dark red in colour, full of wild fruit, plum, and berry flavours, this wine is of a more traditional character, heavy and intense, but with balanced acidity and spicy notes from the oak it is matured in, and good mid-palate weight.

We had no wine glasses but drank it from large, thick tea glasses. That’s the reason why I have no picture to show the beautiful colour of the wine. The ‘2006 Tempranillo Beronia Rioja’ sells for about US $ 13 in the USA, we got it for the equivalent of about US $ 21 in Taoyuan, not bad for such a wine.