Well not food as such unless like me you classify “processed grape products” as a food. In addition to my liking for great beers and fine malts I have had a great attraction to red wines over the years.
My earliest introduction to the products was at the mass market end of the scale and while I could enjoy the effect, the taste left a lot to be desired. My eyes were opened one night when I was around 19 and a friend who was the secretary on a shooting estate in the Highlands raided their cellar and produced a bottle of Nuits St Georges (a region of Burgundy), cannot remember which variant exactly but that is unimportant.
While a long way from being the most expensive stuff that you can buy it did introduce me to the idea that wine could lead to an explosion of very pleasant flavours in the mouth. This kick started an affair with affordable French wines which led me to the produce of Bordeaux and some really good finds.
Subsequently my nephews showed me the delights of Australian wine and since then I have never looked back, Chilean, South African, Spanish, Italian, Argentinian and even American (but these are hard to find at a decent price).
My favourite red wine that I have had on more than one occasion is Penfolds Bin 707 which when I was drinking it in my “flush with cash” days of the early nineties was a reasonable £16/17 a bottle, last time I looked it was around £40. The pinnacle of red wine (as some allege) is Penfolds Grange which would cost around £200 for a bottle of 1997 vintage, have never tried it but it is one of my list of things to do before I die/or win the lottery.
So, I enjoy Australian red wines and have drunk many a bottle of Penfold's Rawsons Retreat, Hardys Stamp or a number of Lindemans wines back in the UK. What I have never read there is the small print on the labels of the bottles that I have had in Indonesia of the same wines – I assume that the wine we get here is bottled for the Australian market and exported whereas in the UK it is bottled locally.
“Produced with egg and fish products as a processing aid. Some traces may remain”.
Call me old fashioned but this appears to be taking food allergies to a whole new level, and for my final question if it is OK to warn Aussie consumers why not those in the UK or EU? Or is it some sinister Southern Hemisphere conspiracy to kill us all by allergy and save the planet?
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2 comments:
Ewwwww....
There's an Italian wine I like (can't think of the name--had it once, but it was good, and I like gewurztraminer (sp?) wine. I'm not much of a wine drinker, though.
rt, Hmm, not much to go on there, my fave Italian wine is a red, Barolo - very rich and heavy. Your other pick sounds German or Alsace maybe - white? Have invested a lot of time and money in wine over the years :)
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