DD and I were invited to the National Wine Show awards dinner in Canberra on Friday night. It was very fabulous.
You are probably thinking we were invited to the awards because of Drinks Digest, but that’s not entirely the case.
In the tangled web that I weave, the person doing PR for the event used to work with me at Woman’s Day. She’s now the Director of PitchPerfect Media, which was a sponsor of the awards.
But again, that’s not entirely why I was there.
A few years ago DD told me one of his cycling mates was married to someone who used to work with me, a woman called Michelle Piccioni.
I told him she must be mistaken, as I’d never heard of her.
Then we went to the Southern Highlands together for a cycling weekend (well, the blokes were cycling) and the penny dropped that Michelle Piccioni was my former colleague and fellow redhead Michelle Rowe.
And that’s how we ended up on a double date to the National Wine Show of Australia with Michelle and her husband Ric. The fact I have an alcohol website was just a nice bonus.
The MC for the night was comedian and author Jean Kittson, who was hilarious, loved her to bits.
The Federal Minister for Trade, Don Farrell, gave a speech as well, and the room was filled with wine luminaries.
Only the highest-awarded wines at qualifying Australian wine shows make it to the judging table for the National Wine Show and the best of the best were on our table to try during a four-course dinner at the National Press Club.
We kicked off with canapes and House of Arras 2014 Blanc de blancs before settling in for our delicious dinner, which featured crispy skinned King Reef barramundi fillet, followed by sage-crusted Redgum Creek beef fillet with dauphinoise potato, mushroom duxelles and truffled spinach, then fromage to share and individual black forest cakes.
Nom, nom.
Yarra Yering 2021 Underhill Shiraz was awarded the Prime Minister’s Trophy for 2023 Champion Wine of Show.
That’s the Hon Don above with the winemaker, Sarah Clarke.
However, the favourite bottle at our table was the Rose Trophy winner, Pernod Ricard Winemakers 2022 Barose, which was joyfully emptied in the first 10 minutes.
I didn’t meet the Hon Don, but I ended up knowing a few people in the room and was introduced to lots more, including the MD of Dan Murphy’s, a very nice woman called Agi (above). Oh and I also congratulated Jean on being totally awesome, she was so lovely and said she was sure she recognized me. Bless her, but no.
DD finally had to edge over and whisper in my ear at 11.30pm – as I was chatting to the CEO of Australian Grape & Wine – that he was tired and wanted to go to bed. I was up way past my bedtime too, but was having too much fun to notice.
We wandered off into the chilly night and slept until 9am, which might be a record for me.
The excitement didn’t end there.
On Saturday afternoon we went to a VIP tasting of the more than 800 wines that had entered into the National Wine Show.
There was also a Meredith Cheese-filled table at the tasting! Meredith Marinated Goat’s Cheese on a baguette would have to be my all-time favourite snack.
Heaven.
We settled in for a relaxed afternoon with Michelle and Ric.
You can imagine my delight when I saw the Rose section ….
Then I moved on to the pink sparkling section …
The Sidewood was a fabulous drop.
It was quite dazzling to have the opportunity to taste bucket list wines I’ve written about.
Like this Orlando Lyndale Chardonnay, which was recently named third best value Chardonnay in the world by Wine-Searcher. It was so delicious.
I haven’t been to Canberra for years and it seemed quite lovely too, but it was a flying visit – all we had time to do was drink wine and sleep. Poor us!
I’ll need to go back there for a proper look around. Hopefully I’ll run into Albo walking Toto around Lake Burley Griffin.
On our way back to Sydney, we detoured into Liverpool to stickybeak at an EOFY car sale and DD bought one on the spot! It’s only the second new car he’s ever owned in his life, so it’s very exciting!
Back to the real world now …
Hope you had a fun weekend too!
Song of the day: Neil Diamond “Red, red wine”
housegoeshome 
Awesome! Sounds like a fab weekend. Canberra is great, I’m still discovering things about it – many hidden layers. Many new eateries opening up and so many events. And you get use to the cold in winter. Minus 7 degrees one early morning this week was exhilarating and the frost was so pretty!