‘How I holiday’: wine picks from the team

Any good Burgundy, even if it’s not quite up to Domaine de la Romanee-Conti.

Catching trout in the morning and eating them raw with soy and wasabi for lunch.

Champagne, of course.

Look past the supermarket specials and order a case direct from your favourite winemaker for your Christmas treats this year. We all got behind the ‘buy direct and buy local’ push when Covid hit, and winemakers still need our support as much as ever. My sure-fire winners this year are Tasmanian sparkling, and Margaret River cabernet and chardonnay. The sweet spot right now is between $40 and $80 per bottle.

There will be a lot of mixed emotions about the end to this bizarre year. I’ll be celebrating it with the best: Champagne from 2008, the most sublime and enduring vintage in at least a generation.

When I lived abroad, I enjoyed returning to Australia and drinking sparkling shiraz with my grandmother, with sliced mango and blue cheese. Now that she’s gone, it’s more about celebrating those Australian wines that resonate with an international audience while rejoicing in what makes those particular wines so good: their poise and inimitability. Sorrenberg Gamay, particularly with five to eight years of age, seems to resonate more with friends who have drunk a great deal of Burgundy than pretty much any other Australian wine. Mount Mary Triolet, Castagna’s Ingenue and Genesis, and certain Yarra Yering wines as well.

This year isn’t deserving of something truly festive, like Champagne. I think 2020 demands the sort of joyous and gulpable wines from the Beaujolais, southern Rhone, Langhe and McLaren Vale, particularly easy-swigging expressions of grenache.

In the days when we weren’t cooking lunch, we’d start the mid-morning festivities with Champagne – usually Bollinger or Pol Roger. That all changed with the arrival of cooking duties, which definitely require a sober mind and steady hand. The ‘new’ tradition is to enjoy some lovely wines over lunch and finish with a Rutherglen fortified. Campbells and Morris tend to take it in turns, unless I can find a vintage fortified from the late, great Chris Killeen of Stanton & Killeen. It finishes the day nicely and gets us all mellow and in the mood for another airing of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

In Australia, it would be old-vine shiraz. We have some of the oldest shiraz vines in the world, and they deserve to be celebrated far and wide. The deep concentration of flavour and overall complexities delivered with these wines can be astonishing. Outside Australia, I’d head to northwest Italy and the wines of Barolo. They are nebbiolos capable of stopping you in your tracks such are their arresting beauty and sheer finesse. Buy Barolo with a little bottle age for the best results.

I tend to save up my best wines for the festive season, and I open my favourite on Boxing Day morning. The Test has traditionally been my preferred part of Christmas, although I suppose that will have to change this year – cheers again, 2020!

Probably Bollinger, or Dom Perignon. It’s always Champagne at the bell. 

One of my favourite white varieties is the rare timorasso from Piedmont in Italy. The variety has high acidity, yet it is textural, floral, heady and so compelling. I’m also enjoying blends, both reds and whites, such as bakkheia Tripartite, which is a fab GSM, and Ravensworth’s Fiano & Friends.

Put up your hand if you’re glad to see the back of 2020? Oh, look, everyone. Bidding adieu to a dreadful year while welcoming a new one full of promise, hope and a COVID-19 vaccine deserves the best booze. I’m going out in style with the Taittinger Comtes de Champagne – one of my favourites because it is a blanc de blancs, classy, expensive (I’ve saved my pocket-money) and the outstanding 2008 has recently landed. Cheers. 

We often we have a late-night Christmas Eve prawn-peeling session with Champagne and Australian sparklings. Christmas Day includes at least one great bottle of sparkling shiraz early in the day, then Pimms No. 1 by the jug for about 20 people each year. We have a second wave of visitors in the afternoon, which is when a couple of special bottles might magically make their way out of the cellar.

I think something like a great amaro or vermouth is great because they always come as a surprise.