Dr. Iain Corness
It was a wine dinner with a difference for the Royal Cliff Wine
Club’s members last weekend, with the main feature not being the wine
labels, but the wine bottle, or more correctly the cork – or even more
correctly, the lack of it!
Ekachai
Mahaguna, MD of Canpac Beverages, addresses the gathering at The Royal
Cliff.
Called the Stellar Wine Gala Dinner, the six wines were supplied by Ekachai
Mahaguna’s Canpac Beverages, with two wines from Australia and one each from
Italy, New Zealand, France and South Africa. The common factor with the
wines (three whites, two reds and one sparkler) was that they mostly came
with a screw cap closure.
Yes, extracting corks has gone, like replacing typewriter ribbons and
tapping out Morse code. As Wine Club President Ranjith Chandrasiri remarked,
when he was a sommelier himself, he made extra money by really extracting
the maximum theatre from extracting the cork, resulting in extracting the
maximum tip from the diner.
The
three doctors; Dr Iain, Dr Somchai Pattana-anek and Dr Jamie O’Donnell try
some of the medicinal libations on offer.
Now, a quick flick of the wrist and the bottle is broached and ready for
drinking. When I look back, just how many times have I found myself on a
picnic with no corkscrew? Pushing the cork in with a biro pen certainly
takes the romance away.
No, screw caps are the way of tomorrow and Ranjith, in his address to the
members and guests, stated that in Australia, 99 percent of retailers are
demanding screw caps for their stock. In a blind tasting of wines, the
majority of accredited judges preferred the wines that came from bottles
with screw cap closures. And as an additional bonus, you will never get
another wine that is ‘corked’.
The dinner items, chosen by Executive Chef Walter Thenisch, included a
wonderful jumbo prawn on a skewer resting on chestnut scrambled eggs with
tobikko (the roe of flying fish) beurre blanc. A wonderful mélange of tastes
and flavors washed down by an Australian Wolf Blass Red Label
Traminer/Reisling in which you could really get your tongue around the
fruit.
For the main course of roasted Wagyu beef rump, the wine chosen was a Matua
Valley Estate Pinot Noir, Marlborough, 2007 from New Zealand, however whilst
this wine was favored by most women that evening, the majority of men
returned to the heavier previous wine which was from the Rosemount Estate
Diamond Label Merlot 2006 (Australia).
An overview of the wines was given by the MD of Canpac Beverages Ekachai
Mahaguna himself, whilst the sales manager Suphunnee Chaimipak clocked up
some good sales of the discounted wines to the members and guests at the end
of the evening. I enjoyed the Cantico, Moscato Spumante so much, I even
purchased a bottle to take home. However, sparklers are still sold with a
cork to pop. There are still some romantics out there, like me!
A group of
wine aficionados enjoy the evening.
“What, no
cork?” Guests check out the screw-top range supplied by Canpac Beverages.
The
Cratchit family await their friends at Christmas.
