Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Walters on a sunny Melbourne afternoon in autumn

A mid-afternoon escape from the Global Finance Conference yesterday afternoon landed me in Walter’s Wine Bar on Southbank. I ordered my usual cheese platter and launched into three sample size (75 ml) glasses of extraordinary Italian wines: a 2002 Umberto Cesari Sangiovese, a 2005 Farnese Montepulciano and a 2001 Pasqua Valpolicella. These are powerful flavoursome wines with intense (and in the case of the Pasqua) almost feral bouquets. I run out of adjectives – velvet-glove-smooth but lots of powerful fruit and flavour, some prune and vanilla bean flavours, intense......

Walters is one of my favourite Melbourne destinations. The reason is simple – they have a good restaurant and a superb range of wines. Also great views of the water and the grand old Flinders St Station.

If you have won a fortune at Crown you might consider forking out $4800 for a Domaine de la Romanée-Contee or, if less flush than that, think about spending $16 on this superb Italian trio. Highly recommended – two sets of trios later I was set on the right path to appreciating academic finance papers and econometrics over the rest of the afternoon - though the details kind of escaped me.

The Conference dinner wines served that night at Crown left me under-whelmed but the Italian vino was a hard act to follow.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

harry - I'm shocked.

Think of all the dope smokers, heroin users, fat people, dole bludgers, Howard Haters, Rudd lovers and others who you have just irresponsibly encouraged onto the plonk or the slops.

Heavens.

In a few months that David Hicks will be comfortably ensconced in Yatala Labour Prison with a 24/7 broadband connection, (well if Rudd gets in) he will google his name, turn up your blog, and end up a wine wannabee boozer desiring endless long lunches at southbank and even score himself a tenured job in the faculty of Sports Marketing & Management (Afghanistan Campus)in order to achieve this aim.

I'll remember it was you who caused it all.

hc said...

fxh, The world would be simple without hypocrisy.

The hypocrisy in this case not severe. Italian wines on a sunny, cool afternoon. C'mon.

The imperfections I so very occasionally display only highlight my jewel-like inner self.

Anonymous said...

hc - indeed it was a day of beauty when one feels smug to live in Melbourne.

You'd hardly have to be a freudian to detect, just perhaps, a smidgin of envy in my comment above.