UA 181 BOS 1740 2048 LAX 762 6A

One thing to note: they're still letting RCC members into
the old RCC, which is now the Ambassadors Club: it's just as
ratty as before, perhaps more so as no maintenance appears
to have been done. I had to get to the little RCC on the
12-21 pier to find that out, though. They gave me a coupon
for a drink, but there was no Courvoisier, so I went to
the Ambassadors Club: no dice there either.

We started boarding about 1725 and it was a bit of a
surprise that we pushed back almost on time. Had to sit
around a bit on the tarmac, though, and finally took off
about 45 late. I noted that most of the FAs I'd seen
before (including one on the airport bus going to this
flight) - three I'd had good experiences with, one neutral,
and one who never liked me for some reason - luckily he was
working Y today.

Our routing: BOS2 MHT SYR BUF J94 ECK J38 Greenbay ODI FSD
J114 DVV J60 HEC LAX - apparently we were originally routed
south by ATL owing to storms on the northerly routes, but
the t/s spread over that area as well, which is great, 'cuz
a delay on this end would mean panic for me on the other end.

Chilled gravlax and pumpernickel napoleon - presented with
onion cream cheese and tomatoes. A slight variation on the
previous presentation but pretty similar. Instead of the
usual pitted California olive, there was a real salt-cured
Greek-style one. Service over a bed of nice tasty slices
of alternating red and yellow tomato.

Garden fresh salad - accompanied by balsamic vinaigrette
or green goddess dressing prepared with anchovies, onions,
sour cream and lemon juice. Walnuts in the salad. Good.

Sauteed veal tenderloin with a creamy mushroom cognac sauce
- accented by curried couscous with currants and grilled
zucchini. Had this before: veal was ok, curried couscous
was weird.

Grilled chicken breast in a mustard marinade - complemented
by a white and wild rice medley and snow peas with fresh
herbs. Had this before: not bad. Didn't appeal today.

Farm-raised fillet of catfish with vegetable ratatouille
[as though there were any other kind] - offered with
couscous prepared with fresh herbs. Didn't have this
before, but it sounded dubious, and the FA noted my dismay
and offered me

Linguini with fresh tomatoes: sweet tomatoes with added
sugar (we're talking reeeally sweet here); the linguini
was sort of dried out. I scored this because the FC pax
in their wisdom turned it down, and I guess the FAs were
wise to it. Did have it on FC china, though.

Kinderwood California Cabernet Sauvignon 1997 was sweetish
but with volatile acidity; stemmy and vegetal - all in all
a reprehensible wine.

Eli's praline cheesecake - the usual

Courvoisier - the usual

The movie was one I slept through yesterday: the one about
the guy who rides a lawnmower to visit his brother.

Smooth flight in progress as I type. Ugh, it was smooth,
but the person in 5 just reclined her seat with great
rapidity right smack into this laptop: I just barely had
time to move it back to avoid disaster. Ugh. No room to
write now, and I need to pee, and the guy in B just fell
asleep. Argh.

News. Flight arrived but 10 mins late and pulled in to
gate 75B: there was a concierge for international, and
I said Melbourne? She pointed across to 74: "Over there."
I hopped to, and scanned for my traveling companion. Not
there. Went to the RCC: not there. Discovered some things.
1. You have to get your ticket stamped "visa ok"; 2. the
drink coups are now dated . So back to 74. No one.
Ducked into the 1K room, where they were helpful beyond
helpful and tried to track her (no success) and put a
notation into the record to the effect that I'd be at the
domestic Golden Wing at MEL if she managed to get there
via SYD or something. They have a book exchange (take one,
leave one) at the 1K room, and I thumbed through to see
if anyone had inscribed the flyleaf with an itinerary or
something - no luck. Strikes me that that would be a good
thing. Didn't take any books though, they all looked dull.

Got back to the gate as they announced final boarding.
No B. Oh, well.

UA 847 LAX 2205 0725 +2 MEL 744 15A

So I get settled into my seat in the cozy upstairs about 10
mins before pushback, except that it turns out they aren't
pushing back: battery charger problems. Doesn't prevent me
from using the Empower port, yay, which I'm doing right at
this mo. They've just announced an hour delay and passed
out the ramekins of mixed nuts! Plus the FA has come up to
me and said "passenger B is on board"! Followed by a B
herself (she's in 32K, I have coupons only to upgrade her
one way, and she wisely chose the return). We're still
sitting here, half an hour into the delay. More later.

Light load - upstairs has 3 empties, C downstairs about
half, Y downstairs about 2/3, didn't look at F. B tells
me that she found out that this is a weight-restricted
flight, and they were allowed to fill only 220 in Y and
in fact no employee standbys were allowed (a disadvntage
of SA travel).

Menu:

Smoked trout with horseradish sauce - offered with oven-
roasted dried tomatoes and tri-pepper relish: trout
pretty good but quite bony. Relish had seeds! The trout
might have been some kind of char, as the flesh was
pinkish. Decent-size portion.

Garden fresh salad - accompanied by honey Dijon dressing:
Mizuna and a couple broadleaf greens, semi-fresh. The
dressing that came was a dreadful Caesar from Conway.

Filet mignon served with a tomato artichoke compote -
offered with basil mashed potatoes: my seatmate had
this; the steak was medium-rare and looked pretty good.

Martin Yan's chicken with black pepper honey sauce -
accompnied by spinach Hong Kong noodles and Chinese
seasonal greens: I had this. Extremely salty. A large
serving of chicken breast with a very gloppy cornstarch
sauce flavored with lots of sweet (not all honey, I
think) and the occasional big chunk of black pepper.
The noodles were extrusions of green wallpaper paste;
good baby bok choy (also salty) and a big slab of
head cabbage (didn't eat).

Sacchetti enhanced by creamy sun-dried tomato pesto -
topped with grated Parmesan cheese: I have no idea
what this was - nobody in sight had it. I imagine
a ravioli-type thing?

International cheese sampler with a glass of Sandeman's
Porto - Cheddar and Brie with red flame grapes.

Eli's milk chocolate caramel mousse cake - pretty good.

Godiva chocolates - the usual.

The wines were the De Loach Chardonnay and Wynn's
Coonawarra Shiraz 1997 - decent mass-market wine,
peppery with lots of berry fruit; medium finish.

Discovery Channel is interesting. Anyone seen the
Petronas Towers? Looks like a field trip.

We have a tail wind! and are expected to come in
on time. ... Early in fact, we still have a tail wind,
and I've just woken from a 6 hour sleep, snoozing
through the date line and the equator. I have never
been awake for either of these crossings: have to
cross in a boat sometime (hate boats though).

Snacks are the usual fruit, M&Ms, and so on; was
hoping for some good Japanese snacks, but as there
are no Japanese I can see in C, I guess I should
not have expected anything along those lines. [There
are numerous copies of the Japanese-language United
mag, the one with the Miki House ad, here, though, and
I scarfed one as a souvenir - I love the ads - they're
trying to sell Tomasello American White Zinfandel this
month, a wine from New Jersey (what's up, Doc?).]
The oddity snack (there usually is one) is these
cheese scones from I think (it's somewhat dark here)
Campione d'Italia - I was hefting one in its plastic
wrap, and it felt like a rock. The ever-alert FA asked
if I'd like to have it heated up: I replied that
it was nothing I'd like to put into my body at
midnight (Victoria time). We're having a few
bumpies here and there, nothing special, but the
cockpit keeps making these seatbelt announcements,
which breaks my concentration or slumber.

There's a guy in 15C whose toy computer is smaller
than mine! Must be a Libretto or maybe a CE box.
Reminds me: a quickscan of screens on my cabin
walks on the last couple flights yield: all games!
except for one person who appeared to be designing
t-shirts (this possibly also a game), a blue screen
of death, and this guy now opposite, who appears
to be working, but he might be writing FT for all
I know - I never ever look closely enough to get
any content at all, and I appreciate the courtesy
extended to me likewise (the guy in 6B on the
previous flight, during which I ran down the battery)
looked & looked, until he fell asleep. I wonder why
the notebook mfrs don't do something about this -
for example returning to the old screen technologies,
where you couldn't read the screen except straight
on. This one can be read by anyone inside about a
120 deg range.

- - -

Italian herb omelette with Cheddar and chive rosti
potatoes - complemented by Canadian bacon and a
fruit appetizer

Seasonal fresh fruit plate - offered with creamy yogurt

Flight in 0645, good smooth trip except for some bumps
past Brisbane. Cleared the duty-free shop and customs
in fairly short order, out into the sunny beauty of
Tullamarine at about 0730.

Scorecard: Empower Yes, Airshow Yes, plastic volcano
salt and pepper Yes, personal attention Yes, decent wine
Yes. Martin Yan yucko. But that's my fault for not having
the steak - oh, well, better that it was had by some
Premier who might have been chased over to Qantas by
Martin Yan: UA has me pretty much in the bag; for me
its service has been almost invariably excellent in the
air and most often good on the ground. Of course I get
the benefits of a 1K in C, so my experience is atypical.

Question: why are many of the promos so counterproductive?
Sam Choy and Martin Yan have been spotty at best, and
Sheila Lukens served up some of the most wildly unbalanced
tastes ever found outside a newlywed household. No beef
with Pepin, a red-rare pork tenderloin (so-called
charcuterie) early in the promotion (the error was not
repeated subsequently) a technical failure I think; and
I really enjoyed both ToC meals I had this year - looked
forward to the promotion from before.

Question, where did you find this out?

"Our routing: BOS2 MHT SYR BUF J94 ECK J38 Greenbay ODI FSD J114 DVV J60 HEC LAX"

nice report - fun to read

- Petronas is neat. they have a big shopping mall at the base andd they just recently opened the high speed elevators to the top to the public. it's kinda odd b/c its so big you can almost miss it if you're too close. you end up just seeing the huge base / shopping mall

- SONY Vaio's have an optional privacy screen which you slide over the screen and it stops the peepers from peeping. a wothwhile investment IMHO.

Excellent report !

Look forward to your report on internal Aussie flight, because I will be on them soon.

To be honest, I never impressed with Martin Yan...

Carfield

About 10 years ago, I was in the audience for the taping of one of Martin Yan's shows. He threw a rice pancake with some brown stuff on it towards the audience, so one of us could "taste test". Anyway, to make a long story short, it landed on my face, and I've never thought much of him either

I think Wynn's makes great wines for the price, especially the Shiraz and Chard. I didn't realize they were mass market a la Rosemount as I have trouble finding them. Are they all over Boston? Great report!

Scribbler:
We get some here, but I wouldn't think they were in the top 10 brands available. A few interesting wine detours I'll write about if I get the time. What's your pref - tasting notes (rudimentary) or no?

TA:
Channel 9 sometimes yields diamonds in the rough. I was astonished to get the info, and barely got half of the stuff down and was most grateful when our crew did a readback of the whole thing

Carfield:
AN domestic was friendly but nothing special. The food was ehh. No menus either.

I have the following menus from this month if you are interested (e-mail me; and if you don't want or already have any of them I'll give them to anyone else who asks) - I'm afraid to say that I lost one or two along the way:

5/00 SHORTHAUL D07J 103L747-3
6/00 TOC L25 203T111-4
6/00 TOC S07/S07J 103T123-4
6/00 TRANSCON D23 203B003-3
6/00 LAX-AKL/SYD/MEL;SFO-SYD LD83-S89-B87 290C003-2
6/00 MEL-LAX (LD83-S89-B87) 291C005-3

another visual delight violinist

I'd love to hear about any of your wine excursions down under. Having never been to Australia I'm curious how the wine experience compares with other parts of the world.

0614 AN95 0755 0845 MEL ADL 320 20A

As we'd asked of our Adelaide people what we should do in Melbourne,
and they'd said, come to Adelaide early instead!, we tried to do so:
our trips on Ansett, booked in Australia, were T fares and thus
theoretically not changeable, so instead of going to the ticket
window, we cut to the chase and headed straight for the Golden Wing.
A huge club full of bustling businesspeople. We threw ourselves at
the mercy of the helpful staff hoping to get on one of the morning
flights. The fellow handling our case said, there's a flight out at
0755 ... it was 0740, and I thought no way: but he'd pulled our
coupons, so B counted that a good sign. At 0745 we were told to
hustle to gate 3; ran out, threw our stuff at security, hurried
to the gate, where the FA said "we've been expecting you." We had
14G (no D seats, I guess) and 20A on a mighty full flight. 1 hr 30
scheduled, and they did a meal service that reminded me in quality
and style of the service we used to get on US carriers in the old
days. Tomato omelet with hollandaise, grilled tomato, and a banger
in a foil-covered tray; roll and butter-substitute (Dairy Soft, a
blend of butter and canola oil, one of the best cut butters I have
ever tasted); and packaged orange juice from Berri, which tasted
like sour soda pop. Landed on time; deplaned from the rear stairs
right onto the somewhat unsecure tarmac; headed right into the
ADL domestic terminal, which is small, clean, friendly, and retro.
It was like coming back to the '60s.

We did a wander about the city, with lunch at the food hall at
Chinatown (ample and well-cooked buffet-style food at about $A5-6
a head, including fried squid, roo in yellow curry (excellent),
beef in Thai red curry (good), various chicken things, taro
dumplings (I love these), pork-stuffed bean curd, and a river of
red wine). The main area of the Central Market was closed off,
but there was plenty to sample or buy. Afterwards we went through
downtown, stopping at the malls and (in a concession to me) the
art museum, where we saw lots of Australian art from Aboriginal
(moved me) to Colonial (I appreciated) to modern (which made me
wonder what made Pollock, Magritte, Picasso great and how one
can tell, versus the rafts of imitators not just in Australia).
A handful of Rodins as well. We didn't see much of the rest of
the collection, not having time.

A taste of the city in brilliant sunshine; the comprehensive
bus system, the lovely parks surrounding; what more can one
ask for.

Pub food, that's what. We repaired to a friend's home, where a
box of Stanley red wine and a rooster climbing a tree tided
us over until it was time to go to Kevin's beloved Hotel Royal
with its poolhall bar separated from the bar-restaurant-pokies
by a drive-thru liquor store. Started at the left and worked
right. I had a Victoria Bitter and caused a squawk as they tried
to sell me a schooner (12 fl oz), and I asked if there was anything
else: they asked "smaller?" and I said "larger." Had a rather meager
15-or-16 oz pint while the rest had either port-and-rum or
raspberry-and-rum. Got a few bottles of Jamieson's Run wines at the
store, and went in to the restaurant.

The restaurant is called Schnitzels Plus, and it's surprisingly
good considering its odd setting. Which is a bar with a jazz-singer-
sax-player on one side, pokies machines (video poker) on the other,
and an eating area in the middle.

What other people had.

Fried calamari - tasty but of variable texture ranging from okay to
rubbery.

T-bone steaks with mushroom sauce or Diane sauce - done as ordered,
no nonsense, pretty good, with chips.

Roast lamb, cooked quite gray, but tasty all the same.

Barramundi in red curry, a decent but nothing special fish, pretty
firm and of mild flavor, rather like a sea bass, in a tasty but
overpowering sauce.

Roo schnitzel in green curry, pretty good but ditto.

What I had

Brains and bacon with tomato sauce and brown sauce - good brains,
good bacon, sauces okay. A strewing of pea shoots (good) completed
the dish but didn't add much. Could have used a sharper sauce, as
regular tomato sauce and regular brown sauce were no match for the
richness of the fried brains. The smokiness of the bacon was a very
nice accent.

Roo filet with black pepper sauce, herb damper, and hash browns.
Good roo, meaty-livery-gamy, done medium-well, the sauce a stock
reduction with tons of pepper, perhaps even too much. Herb damper
was a standard white roll with sage and thyme I think, and hash
browns were right out of a frozen package (too bad!).

A certain number of bottles of Andrew Garrett Bold Shiraz 1998
accompanied well - plummy, earthy, with spices on the nose and
a good fruity finish. A touch sweet but attractively so.

Then a snack of Tim-Tams (crunchy biscuit/cookie surrounded with very sweet chocolate) in 5 flavors: dark, double-coat, mocha,original, and caramel-filled. Moreish (I am a sucker for malted-milk flavor) but too sweet. And so to bed.

The next day, or the next day but one, I forget, dawned sunny and
golden blue, so we took off to Mt. Lofty (the gigantic perhaps 700m
peak overlooking the city) to collect our thoughts. This mountain
with its tribute to the Adelaide firefighters (there was a terrific
wildfire here in '83 or '84 which burned out the monastery and the
government retreat house near the summit) has a remote feel, despite
the carpark and summit house restaurant, owing to the impressive
openness and the high winds. We repaired to the gift shop (run by
the parks service, prices 10-15 percent below downtown), where we
loaded up on knickknacks and postcards and Kevin flirted with the
two delicious young (female) sales/information clerks. B used her
Diner's Club to earn miles not only on both of our purchases, but
also on my postage stamps. Notable merchandise there include tea
tree oil in 100% and 15% formulations and chocolate covered things,
including apricots (nice) and licorice bits (err, odd ... bought
on the recommendation of the cuter of the clerks). Also the usual
run of "ROO CROSSING" signs, didjeridoos, boomerangs, and stuffed
toys (I got a koala kit, less space to clutter up my carryon with).

Went to the summit area, which overlooks some of the takeoff and
approach paths of ADL (not amazing birdwatching there, as AN and
QF fly mostly 320s and the occasional 146, and the South Asian
carriers fly 762s and 763s in seldom and at odd hours). There was
one 4-engine job that went right overhead, and one of us claimed
that it had been a propellor plane (I couldn't really see that
far), so we speculated without success on what it might be: turned
out that in the local paper next day it was noted that a Super
Connie that had been rescued from the Tucson graveyard had come
to Adelaide for a visit: so we'd gotten a glimpse at a rare and
historic plane (this aircraft had some other interesting things
about it, such as that Elvis had ridden it to his military service
in Germany in nineteen ought whatever).

Then we walked don below the summit a bit and (finding a Cleland
Park 1 km sign) decided to walk down the road to the wildlife park:
en route we found some interesting gilled mushrooms and a large
pink Ramaria, of which I took a photo with Kevin lurking in the
background with bared teeth. About 2 km down the road, we saw
an arrow pointing left with a 1 km sign, followed by (almost
immediately) a park sign saying 1.6 km! Well, we dispatched Glen
up the hill to fetch the car and proceeded to the park, which is
impressive, with large free-roaming areas stocked with herbivores
(the dingo area is fenced off carefully! but apparently last year
one of the females managed to figure out how to climb between a
tree and a fence to get over, with the result that many waterfowl
were lost before overcurving additions were built onto the fence
and she was banished to another park). I chucked an albino red
kangaroo mother (with joey in pouch) under the chin and took
photos (I am not customarily a phototaker) of red and gray roos,
a large wombat, a Tasmanian devil eating a rat, and three pelicans.

Ended up spending all afternoon at the park, so we headed back up
to the restaurant on Mt. Lofty, where we snacked on

Cooper's Premium Lager, a German-style brew reminiscent of a
coastal beer and d'Arenberg's Olive Grove Chardonnay 1998 -
moderate oaking, gold color. Pleasant fruit but a bitter finish
which went interestingly with

Cowell (SA) oysters - large fat spawning rock oysters with a strong
cucumber flavor, creamy mouthfeel, sweet rich flavor, a bitter
aftertaste with the Pacific oyster (think smoked oysters) tang.
Served in an architectural construction with pickled rind of some
sort and a little stack of sour cream, cucumber, and brown bread
sandwiches.

The soup of the day smelled good, and two of us had this - a cumin-
green curry scented vegetable soup that was actually the staff meal,
but which they sold us as a snack.

Also, Maggie Beer's Pheasant Farm pate, a sweet-liqueured juniper-
scented charcuterie that B liked but I wasn't thrilled by.

Eating seems to have been the main theme of the meal, so we
shortly headed to dinner:

Charlick's Feed Store, Ebenezer Place, Adelaide. I was slightly
dismayed by the cosmopolitan wood-and-glass minimalist chichi
decor. Menu looked interesting, and we had a good and fairly
festive meal (came to US$35 a head with wine, not bad at all).

Appetizers
Duck "confit" in a dark cherry sorta-Montmorency sauce was very
tasty, a nicely braised leg of duck (but one that had not been
confit in any way I am familiar with, which I think means that
it had not been confit at all).

Sweetbreads (lamb) in lemon sauce with Brussels sprouts and toasted
almonds were excellent; the Brussels were a surprise (not in the menu
listing), and I wondered about them, although they went well. Next
day at the Adelaide Central Market I discovered that Brussels sprouts
are one of the most expensive vegetables for sale!

The very same Maggie Beer's Pheasant Farm pate - shouldn't have been
a surprise to us, as Ms Beer is the menu consultant and possibly an
owner of this place - this iteration served with numerous juniper
berries and butter-fatty grilled toasts.

Mains
Roast quail were fresh and good, although Kevin said that they were
undercooked to his taste (they were sort of medium-rare). I encouraged
him to return them for a trip through the nuke, but he refused.

Roast lamb in rosemary was a giant serving of medium lamb with a
sizable portion of fat. This is okay, as the fat served to moisten
the lamb, which was of sufficient size anyway, and which was one of
the better pieces of lamb we've encountered in a while.

Roast chicken in goat cream with wild rice was very tasty, although
I found a mess of flavors in the mouth and could do without the goat
cream. Excellent chicken, done just right.

I had the duck confit appetizer for my main course.

Along with all this came a dish of buttered fingerling potatoes (good)
and a wedges-of-iceberg salad with pea sprouts (weird).

No dessert.

The wine was Coriole's Diva Cabernet-Sangiovese blend 1996, a very
complex too-young wine with some power (but 7% or so merlot to
make it drinkable). It had that very forward tannin that I expect
from the Sangiovese and reminded me of a well aged Barolo on the
palate. The fruit although present was an undertone, and there were
green notes of olive and green pepper. Fruit came out, as usual, on
the finish. Kevin, the vintner, had balked at my suggestion that we
go out and visit this winery, but after tasting the wine decided
that this was not such a bad idea after all.

A slight contretemps in otherwise fine service: some young
busboy, when the bottle was almost finished, decided to finish
pouring, which set me off a bit, as he'd not appeared anywhere
near before, and it was a blatant effort either to put sediment
in our glasses or sell us another bottle of wine,
which we didn't need at $60 per. So I lit into him and he retorted
with a snide comment, so we finished our knockdown-dragout at
the bar: the denouement was his taking a snide retort of mine as
an apology, so I left it at that, encouraging him however to stay
clear of our table, which to his credit he did for the rest of the
meal). Our waitress was good, and the waterboy was good (I think
he was actually the bartender and had a few years' experience on
him). We closed the place down, and as I noted before, the bill was
A$200 for four, all inclusive.

I'm hungry for dinner now and it's only 10:21am in Los Angeles!

We headed south out of Adelaide to catch a few
wineries - stopped first at Chateau Reynella,
which is one of those historic shrine type
places. Took a look around - looked mighty
industrial (which it probably is, as it's now
a Hardy's property). As it wasn't open for
visitors and tastings yet, we decided that
we'd head back if we had time (we didn't).
Pity: the Reynella wines really are nice.

Off to McLaren Vale and Coriole.

We hit gorgeous Coriole right at opening time
and headed into the tasting barn. I don't know
if it was the bright blue sky or the rolling
vineyard landscape, but this proved to be one
of the best tasting experiences I've had.
[tasting notes moved to Omni]

Off to D'Arenberg, which turned out to be
quite yuppified, with a fancy glass-fronted
restaurant that had recently hosted either the
prime minister or the provincial premier, I
forget which. We were served by two pourers,
one looking just like Paul Hogan, and about
that age, the other young and relatively
inexperienced, although affable enough. Both
knew their business, the older one better.
Lots of people - apparently a bus tour as well
as bunches of visitors from the city. Sawdust
in the spittoons.
[tasting and lunch notes moved to Omni]

Returned to Coriole to pick up some stuff, and
by then it was too late to get back to
Reynella, so we moseyed back by way of the
Mount Lofty area and Windy Point (where we
saw the green flash at sundown, a first for me).

Next day ...
After a few wrong turns this morning we found
ourselves at the Wolf Blass winery on the
Sturt Highway north of Nuriootpa. A pleasant
little tasting room in the front of a big
industrial complex.

As usual I ignored the whites (Wolf Blass
whites, though, are bigger than most and built
for aging: at least that was the case when
Blass was behind the operation, a bunch of
years ago - he was early in the move toward
super-oaked Chards and the like).

We had a super tasting, efficiently run by two
pleasant ladies behind the bar. I got to taste
the entire line of reds except for the super-
premium Black Label stuff [tns in Omni].

By this time it was pushing noon, and we made
our adieux to the pleasant ladies personning
the tasting room, with the excuse that we'd be
late to our scheduled tasting at Peter
Lehmann.

Went back through Nuriootpa (a little farming
town that still has some of the old character,
unlike Tanunda), and turned in to the Peter
Lehmann winery, where we had arranged for a
tutored tasting, which was held by Peter's
wife Margaret.

Lehmann's is in a largish low building that
was originally someone else's winery: a clean,
airy tasting room (crackling fireplace on the
right side) in front, some interesting
exhibits and a small function/dining room in
the middle, and the old winemaking operation
(now for show only) in the back.

There's a certain obsession with the queen of
clubs here - every label has some version of
her (commissioned paintings are the
originals), from the earth-mother Shiraz one
to the classic beauty of the Cabernet: a
couple racy bare-breasted sensuous women
(Semillon and Grenache, I think) had to be
redesigned, I was told, for the American
market!

Turns out that when Peter started the winery
during a wine glut, he chose the gambler's
queen as a theme. The story in the press goes
that when Saltram reneged on its contracts
with grape growers during 1978-1979, Peter
left as chief winemaker and founded this
company to make good on those contracts and
(not incidentally) get some independence. It
was one of those big gambles, and it's paid
off.

We repaired to the dining room, where our
places had been set with an array of ordinary
glasses for the ordinary wines and some
Riedels for the big reds. A tray with crusty
bread, ham, cheese, and olives was available
for palate cleansing (I use bread alone for
this purpose - think that the other things
tire the taste buds and soften the impact of
the wine so cannot comment on these tastes,
although the food looked wonderful).
[tasting notes in Omni]

After the tasting, Peter (an old friend of
Kevin's - afterwards we left them back in the
corner reminiscing for a while) made his
appearance, and we chatted informally a bit.
Turns out that Margaret's nephew Robert is a
cellist I used to play with occasionally back
in the old days, so there was a bit of
small-worldish talk about that too.