The Other Night

Last night I got a rather late email from a friend and wine contact, Sommelier Ben Knight. Ben runs a company called BenandWine (benandwine.com). He writes wine list's for three gorgeous restaurants in Melbourne (The Commoner, Bottega Restaurant & Punch Lane), consult's for numerous little wineries, write's occasional columns in newspaper's, conducts wine lessons and can also be seen at regular tastings, which is exactly how I met him.

The email entailed two free available seats for his French wine class, which one of the numerous classes he conducts often. Myself and my good friend Jonathan headed down to the class in the city on Swanston street. The restaurant it was held at was "La Vita Buona" (see below) and fantastic place to stop off and have a quick after work snack or nibbles. The wine list and some of the drinks on offer by the glass are amazing and worth a stop off. Lot's of internationals for very cheap price's by the glass.

The class included eleven different glasses. One champagne, four white's, four red's, a sticky and a cognac. It was great to see how far I'd come in my palate and tasting knowledge since the last class and would STRONGLY suggest these classes to anyone. At $50 a pop, it's an absolute steal, I literally have no idea how Ben make's any money from it. At the end of the class too the bottle's are left for anyone to take or finish off there.

Myself and Jony thought it'd be a great idea to grab the Southern Rhone Rouge (although the Beaujolais was quite nice) and the beautiful Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise sticky and heade off to his work (Council Bar) just on Little Collins St to grab a bite for dinner.

The '06 Beaumes-de-Venise (pronounced, BOAM DE VE-NISE and see below) from Domaine De Durban was another fantastic sticky. Almost comparable to a '05 Umani Ronchi Botrytis Sauv Blanc I had a week or so ago at a tasting which was just amazing, absolutely coated your mouth with honey and golden syrupy flavours. This Muscat was very much the same however it had a bit more alcohol/acidity at the back of the palate which was surprisingly nice for a dessert wine and would be great with some goats cheese or maybe even as a pre-dinner drink to get your stomach churning ready for food.

Once we arrived at Council Bar, a beautiful little tapas come cocktail bar at night, jony ordered these amazing prawn spring roll things that were almost like prawn crostini with a caramel dipping sauce. We also got some bread with some dips and of course some croquettes.

What a nice way to spend a usually boring Monday evening, mmm.