This Season's Food + Wine

Winter has arrived.  As the evenings get cooler, the fires are stoked and many of us start to enjoy our red wine even more.

So it’s a good time to think about what food pairs well with your favourite red.  Our friends from Hillock Down Produce Store in Rye have provided us with this great, warming recipe that will go perfectly with our 2015 Crittenden Estate Kangerong Pinot Noir. 

Polpette - Meatballs in Tomato Sauce

by Hillock Downs Produce Store

INGREDIENTS

1 kilo Hillock Downs grass feed beef mince
150 grams of breadcrumbs
180 grams of Parmesan cheese greated finely
4 tablespoons of fresh Italian parsley, chopped finely
4 eggs
160 ml of olive oil
2 onions finely chopped
1 garlic clove
2 kilo of Hillock Downs passata sauce
2 bay leaves
Extra grated parmesan cheese and chopped parsley to serve
500 g of your favourite pasta

METHOD
Mix breadcrumbs, cheese, parsley with the beef mince. Add 3 eggs first and mix well. Mixture should all come together. If it feels too dry, add the 4th egg. Roll mixture into balls. Heat oil in a pan that’s large enough to hold all the meat balls. Cook meatballs until golden brown as they brown lift them out. Fry onion and garlic until sautéed, then add the passata sauce. Add all of the browned meatballs back to pan with Passata sauce. Add bay leaves and simmer for 40 minutes. Cook pasta according to packet instructions until al dente. Maniare!
 

TO SERVE
Place cooked pasta in a large bowl and spoon meatballs over the top. Sprinkle with extra parmesan cheese and parsely.
 

MATCHED BEVERAGE
2015 Crittenden Estate Kangerong Pinot Noir

ABOUT HILLOCK DOWNS PRODUCE STORE
We at Hillock Downs are committed to providing you with the best beef made by nature. We are MSA licenced producers and pasture certified which means there are no hormones and are antibiotic free animals. We make sure the animals are treated with the utmost respect. Our cattle are all born and raised right here on the farm using traditional and sustainable farming practices.

151 Dundas St, Rye
Tel: 0413 777 737
hillock-downs.com.au

If you’re looking for some other great wine recommendations for this season, the following tipples will be just perfect for your winter months:

• 2015 OGGI B, the white wine for red wine lovers
• 2016 Pinoccchio Sangiovese
• 2015 Geppetto Cab Merlot 
• 2015 Los Hermanos Homenaje 

05/07/2017 at 11:05 AM Permalink

The Steady Hum of Vintage

The steady hum of vintage has wound down to a gentle whisper of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir slowly finishing their ferments.  2017 has been a very promising vintage for Crittenden Estate, the journey to this point beginning around spring 2016. 

Our vineyard sprung to life right on schedule and was followed by strong, healthy spring growth.  The vineyards flowering period coincided with a cool spell in November, leading to reduced potential yields and a few nerves leading into summer.  A hands on approach and attention to detail in the vineyard helped reduce the threat of disease from high humidity and heavy rainfall over the New Year period.  A mild to warm summer ensued, along with timely rainfall, aiding the vineyard in the approach to harvest.  For us, the 2017 vintage will be defined by the near perfect ripening conditions of late February and March.  Mild days, cool nights and dry weather led to a stable, prolonged ripening for our grapes, with our various blocks picked at optimum balance and ripeness.

Things moved very smoothly in the winery this harvest.  Batches of fruit arrived in timely fashion and were given their deserved full attention by the winery team.  Time enough to put some premium Pinot Noir through our little basket press, gently extracting the skins, giving superb results.  The whites exhibit lovely natural acidity, ripeness and balance.  At this early stage the potential quality is very high.  The Pinot Noirs have an elegant poise, fine subtle tannin and are less boisterous than 2016.  They poses excellent expression of place and in time will become archetypical Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noirs. 

With winter setting in the vineyard begins to shut down and winery slips back a gear or two.  There is, however, plenty of work to do and the excitement of seeing the 2017 wines develop in barrel will provide ample inspiration.

05/07/2017 at 10:46 AM Permalink

The Complete Sensory Package

Have you taken flight on The Eagle at Arthurs Seat yet? Indulged your senses at our onsite accommodation Lakeside Villas at Crittenden Estate? Combine the two along with a VIP Wine Experience here at The Crittenden Wine Centre and ensure that your stay on the Peninsula is one that refreshes all of your senses....

The package for two includes: 

* 2 nights accommodation in a luxury Lakeside Villa.
* Bottle of Crittenden sparkling wine chilled on arrival.
* VIP Wine tasting for 2 people in the award winning Crittenden Wine Centre Breakfast hamper with locally sourced Peninsula produce.
* Locally produced 'olieve & olie' organic skin products gift hamper.
* Return flight for two adults on The Eagle at Arthurs Seat. 

Mid week 2 night stay - $720 per couple, Weekend stay - $1020 per couple. Not available from 24 July - 4 August due to maintenance works on The Eagle. Click here for more details.

23/06/2017 at 1:41 PM Permalink

Melbourne Food and Wine Festival sets new benchmark

The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival [MFWF] has just concluded a long week of events for its twenty fifth year and what a week it was, coinciding as it did with the announcement of the Top 50 Restaurants of the World in Melbourne. It was generally agreed this year was the best yet and set a new benchmark for food and wine in this state.

On the Festival’s final night 140 guests were treated to a special dinner in the MFWF Wine and Food room in Little Lonsdale Street with Scott Pickett from Estelle Restaurant preparing an amazing line up of five courses.

This feature event was an opportunity for 12 MFWF “Wine Legends” to each host a table of 10 guests and match a range of their own and related wines to Scott’s menu. Same food but different wine for each table.

As a Legend I was invited to participate and searched my cellar from top to bottom for an appropriate pairing for each course. If you click HERE you can see the menu and the wines I matched to each dish. And to add to the fun I had the good fortune to have the redoubtable Adam Cash, late of Union Dining in Richmond and now at MAHA in the CBD acting as my sommelier for the night.

For reasons I’m not clear about, so popular was my table that I finished up hosting a group of 23 guests rather than the expected 10 and this required moving to a Private Dining Room. Here are two photos attached, one of me speaking to my guests and another of the 12 “Legends” who presented on the night. They and their wineries are named in the caption.

Bring on the 2018 Festival I say.

From Left to Right:

Julian Castagna, Castagna Wines. Pat Carmody, Craiglee. Sue Hodder, Wynns Coonawarra. Philip Jones, Bass Phillip. Mick Morris, Morris Wines. John Thompson, Crawford River. Gil De Pury, Yeringberg. Rick Kinzbrunner, Giaconda. Garry Crittenden, Crittenden Estate. Viv Thompson, Bests. Ron Laughton, Jasper Hill. Dominic Portet, Portet Wines. Iain Riggs, Brokenwood 

Image credit @danmahonphotos 

20/04/2017 at 1:52 PM Permalink

Garry's Marcona Almonds

A number of years ago, while travelling through Spain, I discovered Marcona almonds; a rather different and dare I say superior nut to the common or garden variety almond widely known in Australia. On my return I thought I might plant a few trees at the vineyard and made the rounds of local wholesale fruit tree nurseries in search of some. Unfortunately I was met with a blank stare, no one in Australia was familiar with the Marcona variety. Undaunted I began to phone around fruit tree grower associations and, lo and behold, eventually found a girl in the bud wood import section of the Department of Primary Industry in Adelaide who proudly announced they were about to release the first ever stocks of Marcona buds in Australia. “Great” I said, “I’ll take 50 buds please, for grafting myself”.  I was promptly told, however, that I wasn’t eligible as I wasn’t a registered fruit tree grower. Problem solved; I simply rang a colleague who was registered and asked him to graft the trees for me. I had 50 trees delivered in 15 cm pots a year later. I planted a dozen out on the property and sold or gave the rest to anyone who was interested. And in so doing I became the FIRST person ever to have this variety in Australia.

As the years have passed I’ve been increasingly frustrated at my inability to protect the small crops from the marauding cockatoos who absolutely obliterate the embryonic nuts long before they are anywhere ready for harvest. So as it turns out I’m most likely NOT the first person to harvest Marcona here, others who planted later may well have been more successful.

This year was different though, nothing was going to stop me and I spent a small fortune in protective measures. So here, finally, are my first crop of Marcona almonds. On the right (pictured below) we have the just harvested husks and on the left the shelled kernels.

I only wish I had enough to share with visitors to the Wine Centre….but maybe next year!

By Garry Crittenden

18/04/2017 at 12:05 PM Permalink